Chess grandmaster visits Cleveland school
Chess expert a hit at Bryant School
Friday, February 01, 2008
Grant Segall
Plain Dealer Reporter
The international grandmaster stood over the chessboard Thursday and blinked. Two Cleveland public school students had trapped his queen.
Only they didn’t know it, and the grandmaster wriggled free.
“You should have taken my queen!” Maurice Ashley told a sixth-grader and an eighth-grader afterward at William Cullen Bryant School. “I would still have had more stuff, but you would have had a real chance.”
Ashley played 31 si multaneous games at Bryant and won them all. Then he leaned against a wall and said, “Whew! A couple good players.”
A top player and promoter of the game, Ashley was starting two days of matches and pep talks in Cleveland and Shaker Heights. The only black chess player to achieve the top rank — international grandmaster — particularly likes to encourage other black players like Trey Modlin, 14, a rising star from Shaker Heights.
Here is the full story.
Good job GM Ashley.
I don’t think Maurice is the only black GM, I believe that Pontus Carlsson from Sweden is a GM as well now.
Carlsson has a higher rating than Ashley as well!
I don’ tknow Pontus Carlsson. Is he black? It’s never been clear if Ashley is the only black GM, or the only American black GM?
I’ve seen stories that described him as the “only African-American GM”, but with political correctness, the term African-American is often incorrectly used to describe non-Americans.
I even remember a Usenet discussion in which a dimwitted lady blew a gasket over the fact that an actor was described as black, rather than African-American. Even pointing out that the actor in question was a citizen of the UK didn’t dampen her spirits at all. According to her, he was African-American just the same.
Yes, Carlsson is definitely a GM. But when did he get it? Ashley’s e-mail address is FirstBlackGM, not OnlyBlackGM. Ashley is 16 years older than Carlsson, so he probably was first. The article just gets it wrong in saying he was the only one.
I’m pretty sure Ashley was the first black GM. I read about Pontus Carlsson on the chess drum website where he was referred to as an IM with two GM norms. This was dated 2004 so I checked with the FIDE site to see if Carlsson ever made it to GM, and he had.
There used to be several very strong black players in the Kings Head chess club in London. If I recall correctly three of them played for the Nigerian olympiad team. I think the strongest (Okike?) was rated about 2300.
There are two Black GMs of note. Yes… most of us still use the generic term “Black” since it’s use describes people of African descent. It’s a label we prefer to use within the Black community and is associated with cultural pride.
African-American merely became a trend after Jesse Jackson used it for political-correctness, but it’s ambiguous and people do not stick with it when talking or writing. There are whites, Indians, Asians and Arabs who were born in Africa and live here in America… thus African-American?
Pontus was the second known Black GM. I have written many articles on him over the years including a recent interview. Amon Simutowe of Zambia is a GM-elect. I have not been able to verify the apparent Black GMs in Latin America. Ironically, Pontus Carlsson was born in Columbia.
Go to The Chess Drum and punch his name in the search box. There are 6000 pages and more than a dozen stories about Pontus.
Daaim Shabazz, The Chess Drum
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