How Did Arthur Ashe Break The Color Barrier

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When famed baseball player Jackie robinson broke the color barrier, many young black atheltes all across America were eager to follow in his footsteps, One of them being a skinny 7 year old kid from Richmond, Virginia named Arthur Ashe. “I grew up aware,” Ashe wrote in 1981, “that I was a Negro, colored, black, a coon, a pickaninny, a nigger, an ace, a spade, and other less flattering terms”, and this held true for any other African American growing up in the segregated south. For a young Ashe, racial discrimination was a part of everyday life. “I never thought much about it,” he explained. “Life was that way. There were certain theaters I couldn’t go to, certain soda fountains and schools and playgrounds that weren’t for me. There was no