That year the Wimbledon final was an all-Armory affair.

The history books record that Arthur Ashe, who graduated from Sumner High, beat Jimmy Connors, from Belleville, to become the first and, to date, the only Black man to win the Wimbledon singles title. Both were products of the Armory, training together from Arthur’s senior year on.

Arthur is also still the only Black man to have won the US Open and the Australian Open, and he was the first Black man on the US Davis Cup team. (Ed. note: Those St. Louis names just keep popping up!)

All told, Arthur would win those three Grand Slams in singles and two more in doubles.

But as great a champion as Arthur was on the court, his true legacy will always be in the powerful examples he set and the principles he championed off the court, where he lived and died with dignity and grace.

Jimmy was no slouch either. He would go on to hold the ATP’s #1 ranking for a then-record 160 weeks in a row and 268 weeks total. By the time he finished in the early 1990s, he had amassed eight Grand Slam titles and a record 109 tournament championships.