Maurice Ashley is the first Black Grandmaster; he earned the title in 1999. Grand Master is the title that you get when you beat all of the top chess players around the world. What’s also amazing is that he’s not a nerd.
No shade to the nerd community, the community in which I have a lifelong membership. It’s just that most Blacks are taught, and in some cases encouraged to believe that chess is a nerd’s game, so when some of us think of chess players, we think of “nerds”.
Any-who, Ashley was born in Jamaica where he and his brother and sister were raised by their 64 year old grandmother. In short, his mom left for the U.S. when he was 2 years old; and came back for her children 20 years later after establishing a home for her family in Brooklyn, New York (shout out to mom).
Ashley says that in his neighborhood, there were a lot of people who took chess very seriously, and that a small group of those serious players took him in and taught him the game.
He goes on to say that they taught him by showing him no mercy during game-play, and that his competitive nature made him obsessed with learning all that he could so that he could one day beat them, and that he did.
Today he teaches young people how to play chess, he commentates on chess games, he’s an author, and check this out... Hennessy is one of his biggest sponsors. They even named a drink after him: The Grandmaster Cocktail
Ashley is on a mission to encourage young blacks that it’s ok to use your brain to make a living, not only playing chess, but in other fields like science, math, etc. I tell you, he is one of those guys that you simply have to hear his story in his own words to get the full impact.
So hopefully you’ll check out the video for yourself and share it with other chess players of all ages. It’s an amazing interview that was conducted by an amazing interviewer by the name of Young Jas.
This has been a #TeamWoods moment in Black History.
The Grandmaster Cocktail
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