Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker: Crossing Boundaries

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Message: Between 1953 and 1970, fired with a passion for racial equality, Civil Rights leaders in Phoenix drew upon an arsenal of social justice weapons in the battle for civil rights in Phoenix. They helped dismantle an apartheid like system in what is presently the sixth largest city in the U.S. These leaders, though geographically isolated from the Civil Rights Movement in the American South, were not strangers to discrimination and racial inequality. They led the way in securing victories for racial justice in Phoenix. Sometimes they did so in advance of national milestones in civil rights. Local African American leaders such as Opal Ellis, Hazel B. Daniels, Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale, George Brooks and Clovis Campbell Sr., played tremendous roles in Phoenix by promoting racial healing and a multiracial American democracy through non-violent social change. These activists were armed with hope and a passion justice, and they were aided by sympathetic white Phoenicians such as Herbert L. Ely, William P. Mahoney, Fran Waldman and other people of color, such as Manuel Pena. The Ragsdales, through their work in the Greater Phoenix Council for Civil Unity (GPCCU), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and through intense networking, dialogue and non-violent protest, played a critical role in calling upon Phoenix’s public and private sector to abandon their discriminatory practices. The leadership of Hazel B. Daniels helped desegregate Phoenician schools in 1953, one year before the landmark 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education school desegregation ruling. Lincoln Ragsdale’s bold and confrontational leadership exploited the uniquely fluid racial relations in the West, to fashion a career that was both unabashed and creative, when many of his Southern contemporaries were under constant threat of terrorism and a more violent version of massive white resistance. Between 1954 and 1970, America’s civil rights movement peaked. Through an aggressive coalition of organizations and agencies, such as Phoenix’s Human Relations Commission, activists fought de jure and de facto racial segregation. They continued to attack segregation in the courts, and through “direct action protests” such as “sit-ins,” boycotts and other forms of civil disobedience. In the face of this onslaught and despite persistent white resistance, legal segregation and disfranchisement collapsed. Although racism remained and African Americans and other people of colored lagged behind their white counterparts economically and politically, these groups experienced unprecedented improvements in their socio-economic mobility. The activism that defined the black freedom struggle also inspired white women and various people of color and other marginalized groups, to adopt many of the same strategies to combat discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability and others. In Arizona, Chicanos such as Alfredo Gutierrez in Phoenix, promoted curriculums in colleges and universities, including Arizona State University, that addressed their heritage. Mexican American leaders such as Cesar Chavez, who was born in Yuma, Ariz., worked for the economic advancement of Mexican American migrant workers through the United Farm Workers. American Indians also emerged as a powerful political force during the late 1960s. They organized to address problems such as high unemployment, low life expectancy, high suicide rates, and economic and political marginalization. The determination and the spirit of black civil rights leaders, the strength of their organizations, the trust of their constituents, the dedication of their partners and those who adopted their strategies, pressured private institutions and governmental leaders, agencies and courts, to render decisions that systematically undermined generations of inequality. These changes provided for the advancement and diversification of educational institutions, electoral politics, the arts and the nation’s social consciousness. Many challenges still lay before us, but as our history has shown, much can be accomplished at the federal, state and local level through hard work and coalition building in the pursuit of true social, economic and political equality. http://www.drmatthewwhitaker.com/publications/human-relations-and-the-legacy-of-progressive-action/