VIRGINIA : Statue Honoring Ashe Is Erected

After months of rancor over where to put a monument to tennis star Arthur Ashe, a bronze statue of him was set atop a stone column on a Richmond, Va., street dedicated to Confederate icons in the city where he was born. Statues eastward along tree-lined Monument Avenue honor Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. Ashe, the first black man to win the Wimbledon tournament, spent his early years in a segregated Richmond where he was denied permission to play on the city’s whites-only tennis courts. City residents argued for months over whether the statue should be placed on the avenue or another spot, such as Byrd Park, where he was turned away from the tennis courts.