Correction: Black Chessmaster story
NEW YORK (AP) — In some versions of a story April 18 about Maurice Ashley, The Associated Press reported that Ashley was the first African-American to become a chess grandmaster and the first African-American in the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.
[...] a correction appended at the bottom of some versions of the story said that Ashley is not the first black person to become a chess grandmaster.
"For me to hear that I'm being inducted for everything I've given to the game, that I've done to promote the game, that I've done to help young people play, and for the inspiration I've been, has just been absolutely incredible," Ashley told The Associated Press in an interview at, where else, at Chess Forum, an all-things-chess shop in Manhattan.
Born in Jamaica, Ashley came to the tough Brownsville section of Brooklyn with two siblings when he was 12, reuniting with the mother who had left her children a decade earlier to carve out a better life, working as a nanny and later in a string of office clerk jobs.
The process of becoming a grandmaster is done under the auspices of the World Chess Federation, known by its French acronym FIDE, and involves earning overall points and performing particularly well in chess tournaments.
Ashley, who makes a living from the game as a player, coach and author, says he wants to see more African-American players reach the highest levels.
Some of that seeding involves the work Ashley does with school children, including at an after-school program in Ferguson, Missouri.
