Matthew C. Whitaker

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Matthew C. Whitaker | "Creative Conflict": Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale, Collaboration, and Community Activism in Phoenix, 1953–1965 | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.2 | The History Cooperative

"CREATIVE CONFLICT": LINCOLN AND ELEANOR RAGSDALE, COLLABORATION, AND COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN PHOENIX, 1953–1965

"Creative Conflict" examines the lives of Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale and their trail-blazing leadership during the height of the Civil Rights movement in Phoenix, Arizona. Between 1953 and 1965, through dynamic leadership and interracial coalition building, they helped attack racial discrimination and destroy de jure segregation in Phoenix.

"Conflicto Creativo" examina las vidas de Lincoln y Eleanor Ragsdale y sus esfuerzos de liderazgo durante el punto mas alto del movimento derechos civiles en Phoenix, Arizona. Entre 1953 y 1965, a través de su liderazgo y su trabajo de colaboración entre las razas, ellos ayurdaron a atacar la discrminación de raza destruir la segregación "de jure" en Phoenix.

Race was the atmosphere one breathed from day to day, the pervasive irritant, the chronic allergy, the vague apprehension which made one uncomfortable and jumpy. We knew the race problem was like a deadly snake coiled and ready to strike, and that one avoided its dangers only by never-ending watchfulness.¹

Pauli Murray

BETWEEN 1953 AND 1965, fired with a passion for racial equality, Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale drew upon an arsenal of social-justice weapons in the battle for civil rights in Phoenix, Arizona. They helped dismantle an apartheid-like system in what is presently the sixth largest city in the U. S. The Ragsdales and other western activists, though geographically isolated from the Civil Rights movement in the American South, were not strangers to white supremacy and black resistance. They were roused by years of racial discrimination, World War II, and America's promise of democracy, and sustained by a swelling African American population. They were also buoyed by the burgeoning postwar liberalism of a number of white western leaders. Armed with their experiences, hope, and passion, and aided by sympathetic white Phoenicians, the Ragsdales led the way in securing victories for racial justice in Phoenix, sometimes in advance of national milestones in civil rights.²

Between 1954 and 1965, America's Civil Rights movement peaked. Through an aggressive coalition of organizations, activists fought de jure and de facto racial segregation. They attacked 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 lagged behind their white counterparts economically and politically, blacks experienced unprecedented improvements in their socioeconomic mobility.³

The Phoenician movement, and activism throughout the West, as Quintard Taylor, Jr. has argued, "paralleled the movement East of the Mississippi with regard to strategy, tactics, and objectives." Nevertheless, the western movement took place in an environment where black people were often not the largest minority. In Phoenix, due to the city's small African American population, black leaders were compelled to form alliances with progressive whites and Mexican Americans. As a result, the multi-racial coalitions that were formed "pushed civil rights beyond black and white."⁴ The diversity of these alliances infused the Phoenician movement with a level of social capital, economic strength, and optimism that rarely existed in the South, or even in the Northwest. The optimism and determination of the Ragsdales, and that of other activists, produced many of the region's early civil rights victories. As early as 1951, white Phoenician attorney and civil rights activist, William Mahoney, proclaimed that "the die is cast in the South or in an old city like New York or Chicago, but we here [in Phoenix] are present for creation. We're making a society where the die isn't cast. It can be for good or ill."⁵

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