Tennis great and social activist Arthur Ashe is memorialized on a famous avenue of his hometown of Richmond, Virginia, by a bronze statue that shows him wielding a tennis racquet in one hand and a book in the other. Children sit at his feet, looking up at him for inspiration. Though the statue represents a storm of controversy, with everyone from racist white Virginians to Ashe's own wife Jeanne calling it inappropriate, it also represents an effort to capture what it was that Arthur Ashe gave to the society in which he lived.

Born well before the days of integration in Richmond, the heart of the segregated south, Ashe learned first-hand the pain caused by racism. He was turned away from the Richmond City Tennis Tournament in 1955 because of his race, and by 1961 he left the south, seeking a wider range of opportunities. He...