Shooting Down Racism
BETWEEN 1947 and 1954, Dr. Lincoln JohnsonRagsdale and Eleanor Dickey Ragsdale helpeddestroy residential segregation in Phoenix, Ari-zona, presently the fifth largest city in the United States.In desegregating the previously all-white Encanto-PalmCroft residential neighborhood in the city during thesummer of 1953, they helped stimulate a black Phoeni-cian freedom movement that desegregated Phoenix pub-lic schools in 1953, one year before theBrown v. TheTopeka Board of Educationin 1954, and some of thestate’s largest corporations, such as Bank One of Ari-zona and Motorola as early as 1962. The Ragsdales werenot alone. Local community groups, a number of theminterracial, played key roles in desegregating the “Valleyof the Sun.” The Ragsdales, however, with creativity anda passion for racial equality, helped spark the CivilRights Movement in Phoenix and lead it during its mostpotent period. They were devoted to diversity and racialjustice, and they displayed a extraordinary ability toanchor and manipulate a cornucopia of protest networksduring the city’s black freedom struggle. Although theywere set apart from the Civil Rights Movement in theAmerican South geographically, they were very awareof the exigencies of white supremacy and African Amer-ican insurgency. They were moved to fight after endur-ing discrimination for years, and internalizing WorldWar II’s promise of freedom and democracy. They weresupported by a growing black Phoenician population,and a budding postwar white western liberal establish-ment. Their efforts to aid the African American commu-nity in Phoenix and the cause of freedom during thepost-war years, placed them among the most influentialleaders in American Western history. Their leadershiphelped tear down the rigid walls of residential segrega-tion in Phoenix, and helped transformed the city into amore inclusive and tolerant city.