Richard Hudlin arrived at the University of Chicago and made history. In 1927 he became the first Black captain of a Big Ten Conference athletic team. 

Hudlin's commitment to justice ran in the family. His grandfather, Peter Hudlin, sheltered runaway enslaved people at the family home on the Underground Railroad, and Hudlin himself worked alongside Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois to resist the return of white supremacy after Reconstruction. 

He spent the next four decades making sure others could, too. From 1930 to 1966, Hudlin coached tennis at Sumner High School and fought for Black players' right to compete in an era that didn't want them on the court. He filed a lawsuit to gain access for his players to the Muny courts from which they'd been excluded. His ongoing fight for equal access reshaped the future of tennis in St. Louis. He served as an ATA vice president and became the first Black member of the St. Louis District Tennis Association. 

He coached Althea Gibson. He mentored Arthur Ashe. He also showed up at public parks with balls in grocery bags to work with kids who didn't even own a racket. Because to him, the next Arthur or Althea was always out there, somewhere. 

Richard Hudlin died in 1976. One year after Arthur won Wimbledon. 

The City of St. Louis dedicated the Richard Hudlin Playground and Tennis Courts in Forest Park that same year. In 2018, Hudlin Park was dedicated in Richmond Heights, next to the home where Ashe once lived and practiced. 

He didn't live to see all of it. But that was never the point. 

(1992)