Lincoln Ragsdale
Encyclopedia
Lincoln Johnson Ragsdale, Sr. (July 27, 1926 in Tulsa, Oklahoma
– June 9, 1995 in Paradise Valley, Arizona
) was an influential leader in the Phoenix
-area African-American Civil Rights Movement. Known for his outspokenness, Ragsdale was instrumental in various reform efforts in the Valley, including voting rights and the desegregation
of schools, neighborhoods, and public accommodations.
Perkins) in Tulsa, Oklahoma
, and subsequently grew up in Ardmore, Oklahoma
. In 1921, Hartwell's mortuary was located in the Greenwood
neighborhood of Tulsa, the site of the violent Tulsa race riot
, which he narrowly escaped; the business was burned down by a mob along with most other businesses in that black community. Hartwell's oldest brother, William Ragsdale Jr., was a taxi driver who served whites and blacks and was the first of the six brothers, who started the family legacy of funeral service by opening the nation's first African-American funeral business still owned by the same family. Lincoln has said that he grew up hearing about it. Onlia Ragsdale, the first person in her family to earn a college degree, was the president of the National Association of Colored Women
's Oklahoma chapter. Hartwell's mortuary business, relocated to Ardmore, became a success and the Ragsdales lived more comfortably than most black families during the Great Depression
. Theodore "Ted" Ragsdale, a cousin of Lincoln, followed in William Jr.'s footsteps to become Oklahoma NAACP president in the 1930s despite the earlier death of his brother. Lincoln's parents instilled in him the value of education. He attended the segregated Douglass High School in Ardmore, and around this time began to develop both his love for flying and his entrepreneurial acumen by earning his own money to pay a local pilot to take him up in his plane regularly.
When Lincoln Ragsdale graduated high school in 1944, the new Tuskegee Airmen
, a corps of black military pilots in World War II
, appealed to both his interest in flying and in racial equality. He later remarked that he enlisted to refute the popular notion that blacks could not successfully fly planes. Trained at Tuskegee Army Air Corps Field
in Alabama in 1945, he became part of the US Army's early integration effort. In Alabama, Ragsdale experienced racially-motivated violence firsthand, narrowly escaping a lynching at the hands of local police at the age of 19. As he tells it, Ragsdale, less deferential than normal because of his recent graduation and because he was accustomed to giving orders, had drawn the ire of a white gas station attendant, who alerted the police to his behavior. He was followed out of the station by a police car, and, after pulling over, brutally beaten by three officers with shotguns; one suggested killing him, but another objected because he was wearing a military uniform.
in Arizona for gun
nery training, becoming becoming one of the first black soldiers involved in the base's integration. Ragsdale later remarked upon his surprise at discovering the extent to which Phoenix was plagued by racism similar to the South's. He went on to settle in Phoenix in 1946, where he and brother Hartwell Ragsdale started a mortuary business, which was a traditional Ragsdale family profession. Ragsdale was initially unable to secure a loan, being rejected by all of the banks in town, until a stranger agreed to make a personal loan of $35,000 to start the business after hearing his story. This made Lincoln Ragsdale Phoenix's first black funeral home owner in Arizona in 1948. He would later graduate from the Arizona State University
, and also received a doctorate in business administration from Union Graduate School
. In 1949, he married Eleanor Ragsdale, a local schoolteacher at Dunbar Elementary School who became an important activist in her own right.
Ragsdale's many business holdings over the years included the mortuary business, a real estate agency, a construction business, a restaurant and nightclub, various insurance companies in several states, an ambulance service, and a flower shop. During his years of activism, Ragsdale nevertheless became wealthy in his many business dealings. Ragsdale's original business model subverted Phoenix's discriminatory practices to his own economic gain. Because blacks and Hispanics were not permitted to patronize white establishments, he expected able to corner the market in his industry among those underserved groups—and while Hispanics were not major customers, his business with the small black community boomed. However, Ragsdale, somewhat controversially for the time, began to specifically cater to white and Hispanic clientele in the 1960s, putting him at odds with the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, Inc., a black trade association. He employed white workers and took his name out of the business', renaming from "Ragsdale Mortuary" to "Universal Memorial Center." Ragsdale saw this business decision as part of his broader activism for racial integration: "I was almost bankrupt in 1965. There just wasn't enough business to support me, so I decided to go after the white business. We talk about integration but too often continue to work in all-black situations."
. While the family wanted to have him buried in the military veterans' plot at the Greenwood Memorial Park cemetery in Phoenix, cemeteries were segregated and the veterans' plot was all-white. Ragsdale worked with the GPCCU to publicize the controversy in the media both locally and nationally, getting a fellow activist, Thomasena Grigsby, to publish an editorial in the Chicago Defender
. After a three-month standoff in which the body was left unburied by Ragsdale in a mortuary vault, the funeral directors gave in and voted to integrate the cemetery; Ragsdale went on to work for the integration of other cemeteries.
In April 1951, Ragsdale was elected to the GPCCU board of directors. He and the GPCCU advocated in the Arizona Legislature
for a law to desegregate Arizona's schools. The effort was also backed by some white leaders, notably Barry Goldwater
. The law which passed only went so far as to allow school boards to voluntarily desegregate. While many districts, including Tucson's, did desegregate voluntarily, Phoenix schools did not. The GPCCU then campaigned for a local ballot initiative to desegregate Phoenix's schools, but it failed by a 2-to-1 margin. In 1952, the Ragsdales, the GPCCU, and the NAACP funded a lawsuit against the white-only Phoenix Union High School
on behalf of three black children against school segregation; Ragsdale helped raise the GPCCU's $5,000 contribution for the lawsuit. The suit challenged the legality of the law's segregation option, in effect contesting the law they had just lobbied for. The case, decided by Judge Fred C. Struckmeyer in the Maricopa County Superior Court, became the nation's first court decision declaring school segregation laws illegal, over a year prior to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education
decision. Another case that year brought by the same lawyers against an elementary school agreed with Struckmeyer's decision.
which separated the segregated white and black neighborhoods in Phoenix. In that era, blacks were excluded from home ownership in north of the neighborhoods along Van Buren Street by banks who refused them loans for such houses and real estate agents who refused to show the houses to blacks. Eleanor was a licensed real estate agent with knowledge of the market and also fair-skinned enough to pass for white, both of which allowed her to find a suitable home in a white neighborhood without arousing suspicion; Lincoln viewed the home at night, being driven through an alley behind the house. The Ragsdales, unable to buy the house themselves, asked a white friend of Eleanor to purchase the house in his own name and then transfer the title to them.
They endured threats from neighbors, harassment from local police who would stop them while driving in their own neighborhood, and even graffiti
with racial epithets on their home. Despite never being accepted in their own neighborhood, the couple lived in the home for 17 years and raised their 4 children there, becoming a local symbol of resistance to housing discrimination. The model the Ragsdales had established for circumventing the controls on black home ownership were repeated by other blacks, often aided by Eleanor, to move into other homes in the all-white area.
, Lincoln and Eleanor organized protests at the local Phoenix Woolworth's stores.
Also interested in ending the conservative, all-white rule of the Republicans in local government, Ragsdale participated in the creation of the Action Citizens Committee and ran for Phoenix City Council in 1963 along with the Committee's slate of other candidates. While ultimately narrowly unsuccessful, the campaign drew attention to the lack of minorities and South Phoenix residents in government and led to the registration of many new African-American and Latino voters. In 1964 Ragsdale successfully lobbied the Phoenix City Council
for passage of a public accommodations law, and nearly a year later Arizona passed a statewide civil rights law, both similar in nature to the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964
. 1964 also saw Martin Luther King, Jr.
give a speech at the Arizona State University
at Ragsdale's invitation, after which the Ragsdales hosted him in their home.
home. The executive terminal at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport was renamed the Lincoln J. Ragsdale Executive Terminal in his honor.
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's...
– June 9, 1995 in Paradise Valley, Arizona
Paradise Valley, Arizona
Paradise Valley is a small, affluent town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. According to the 2005 Census Bureau, the population of the town was 14,558. Despite the town's relatively small area and population compared to other municipalities in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Paradise...
) was an influential leader in the Phoenix
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
-area African-American Civil Rights Movement. Known for his outspokenness, Ragsdale was instrumental in various reform efforts in the Valley, including voting rights and the desegregation
Desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...
of schools, neighborhoods, and public accommodations.
Early life and military career
Ragsdale was born on July 27, 1927 to mortician Hartwell Ragsdale and schoolteacher Onlia Violet Ragsdale (néeNEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...
Perkins) in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's...
, and subsequently grew up in Ardmore, Oklahoma
Ardmore, Oklahoma
Ardmore is a business, cultural and tourism city in and the county seat of Carter County, Oklahoma, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 24,283, while a 2007 estimate has the Ardmore micropolitan statistical area totaling 56,694 residents...
. In 1921, Hartwell's mortuary was located in the Greenwood
Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Greenwood was a district in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As one of the most successful and wealthiest African American communities in the United States during the early 20th Century, it was popularly known as America's "Black Wall Street" until the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921...
neighborhood of Tulsa, the site of the violent Tulsa race riot
Tulsa Race Riot
The Tulsa race riot was a large-scale racially motivated conflict, May 31 - June 1st 1921, between the white and black communities of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which the wealthiest African-American community in the United States, the Greenwood District also known as 'The Negro Wall St' was burned to the...
, which he narrowly escaped; the business was burned down by a mob along with most other businesses in that black community. Hartwell's oldest brother, William Ragsdale Jr., was a taxi driver who served whites and blacks and was the first of the six brothers, who started the family legacy of funeral service by opening the nation's first African-American funeral business still owned by the same family. Lincoln has said that he grew up hearing about it. Onlia Ragsdale, the first person in her family to earn a college degree, was the president of the National Association of Colored Women
National Association of Colored Women
The National Association of Colored Women Clubs was established in Washington, D.C., USA, by the merger in 1896 of the National Federation of Afro-American Women, the Women's Era Club of Boston, and the National League of Colored Women of Washington, DC, as well as smaller organizations that had...
's Oklahoma chapter. Hartwell's mortuary business, relocated to Ardmore, became a success and the Ragsdales lived more comfortably than most black families during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. Theodore "Ted" Ragsdale, a cousin of Lincoln, followed in William Jr.'s footsteps to become Oklahoma NAACP president in the 1930s despite the earlier death of his brother. Lincoln's parents instilled in him the value of education. He attended the segregated Douglass High School in Ardmore, and around this time began to develop both his love for flying and his entrepreneurial acumen by earning his own money to pay a local pilot to take him up in his plane regularly.
When Lincoln Ragsdale graduated high school in 1944, the new Tuskegee Airmen
Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen is the popular name of a group of African American pilots who fought in World War II. Formally, they were the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps....
, a corps of black military pilots in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, appealed to both his interest in flying and in racial equality. He later remarked that he enlisted to refute the popular notion that blacks could not successfully fly planes. Trained at Tuskegee Army Air Corps Field
Sharpe Field
Sharpe Field is a private use airport located six nautical miles northwest of the central business district of Tuskegee, a city in Macon County, Alabama, United States. This airport is privately owned by the Bradbury Family Partnership....
in Alabama in 1945, he became part of the US Army's early integration effort. In Alabama, Ragsdale experienced racially-motivated violence firsthand, narrowly escaping a lynching at the hands of local police at the age of 19. As he tells it, Ragsdale, less deferential than normal because of his recent graduation and because he was accustomed to giving orders, had drawn the ire of a white gas station attendant, who alerted the police to his behavior. He was followed out of the station by a police car, and, after pulling over, brutally beaten by three officers with shotguns; one suggested killing him, but another objected because he was wearing a military uniform.
Phoenix and entrepreneurship
Ragsdale was transferred to Luke Air Force BaseLuke Air Force Base
Luke Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located seven miles west of the central business district of Glendale, in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. It is also about west of Phoenix, Arizona....
in Arizona for gun
Gun
A gun is a muzzle or breech-loaded projectile-firing weapon. There are various definitions depending on the nation and branch of service. A "gun" may be distinguished from other firearms in being a crew-served weapon such as a howitzer or mortar, as opposed to a small arm like a rifle or pistol,...
nery training, becoming becoming one of the first black soldiers involved in the base's integration. Ragsdale later remarked upon his surprise at discovering the extent to which Phoenix was plagued by racism similar to the South's. He went on to settle in Phoenix in 1946, where he and brother Hartwell Ragsdale started a mortuary business, which was a traditional Ragsdale family profession. Ragsdale was initially unable to secure a loan, being rejected by all of the banks in town, until a stranger agreed to make a personal loan of $35,000 to start the business after hearing his story. This made Lincoln Ragsdale Phoenix's first black funeral home owner in Arizona in 1948. He would later graduate from the Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
, and also received a doctorate in business administration from Union Graduate School
Union Institute & University
Union Institute & University is a non-profit private college, specializing in limited residence and distance learning programs. With the main campus in Cincinnati, Union Institute & University operates -from Ohio- "satellite campuses" located in Montpelier, Vermont; Brattleboro, Vermont; North...
. In 1949, he married Eleanor Ragsdale, a local schoolteacher at Dunbar Elementary School who became an important activist in her own right.
Ragsdale's many business holdings over the years included the mortuary business, a real estate agency, a construction business, a restaurant and nightclub, various insurance companies in several states, an ambulance service, and a flower shop. During his years of activism, Ragsdale nevertheless became wealthy in his many business dealings. Ragsdale's original business model subverted Phoenix's discriminatory practices to his own economic gain. Because blacks and Hispanics were not permitted to patronize white establishments, he expected able to corner the market in his industry among those underserved groups—and while Hispanics were not major customers, his business with the small black community boomed. However, Ragsdale, somewhat controversially for the time, began to specifically cater to white and Hispanic clientele in the 1960s, putting him at odds with the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, Inc., a black trade association. He employed white workers and took his name out of the business', renaming from "Ragsdale Mortuary" to "Universal Memorial Center." Ragsdale saw this business decision as part of his broader activism for racial integration: "I was almost bankrupt in 1965. There just wasn't enough business to support me, so I decided to go after the white business. We talk about integration but too often continue to work in all-black situations."
Early work
The Ragsdales were founding members of the Greater Phoenix Council for Civic Unity (GPCCU) in the late 1940s. One of Ragsdale's first forays into civil rights action was in a case that touched both his military and mortuary careers. In 1952, Ragsdale's business received the body of Pfc. Thomas Reed, a black soldier killed in the Korean WarKorean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. While the family wanted to have him buried in the military veterans' plot at the Greenwood Memorial Park cemetery in Phoenix, cemeteries were segregated and the veterans' plot was all-white. Ragsdale worked with the GPCCU to publicize the controversy in the media both locally and nationally, getting a fellow activist, Thomasena Grigsby, to publish an editorial in the Chicago Defender
Chicago Defender
The Chicago Defender is a Chicago based newspaper founded in 1905 by an African American for primarily African American readers.In just three years from 1919–1922 the Defender also attracted the writing talents of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks....
. After a three-month standoff in which the body was left unburied by Ragsdale in a mortuary vault, the funeral directors gave in and voted to integrate the cemetery; Ragsdale went on to work for the integration of other cemeteries.
In April 1951, Ragsdale was elected to the GPCCU board of directors. He and the GPCCU advocated in the Arizona Legislature
Arizona Legislature
The Arizona Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Arizona. It is a bicameral legislature that consists of a lower house, the House of Representatives, and an upper house, the Senate. There are 60 Representatives and 30 Senators...
for a law to desegregate Arizona's schools. The effort was also backed by some white leaders, notably Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...
. The law which passed only went so far as to allow school boards to voluntarily desegregate. While many districts, including Tucson's, did desegregate voluntarily, Phoenix schools did not. The GPCCU then campaigned for a local ballot initiative to desegregate Phoenix's schools, but it failed by a 2-to-1 margin. In 1952, the Ragsdales, the GPCCU, and the NAACP funded a lawsuit against the white-only Phoenix Union High School
Phoenix Union High School
Phoenix Union High School was the main high school for Phoenix, Arizona, at 7th Street and Van Buren Avenue. It closed in 1982 amidst declining enrollment, along with East High School and West High School. It is the namesake of the still-extant Phoenix Union High School District.The mascot was the...
on behalf of three black children against school segregation; Ragsdale helped raise the GPCCU's $5,000 contribution for the lawsuit. The suit challenged the legality of the law's segregation option, in effect contesting the law they had just lobbied for. The case, decided by Judge Fred C. Struckmeyer in the Maricopa County Superior Court, became the nation's first court decision declaring school segregation laws illegal, over a year prior to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
decision. Another case that year brought by the same lawyers against an elementary school agreed with Struckmeyer's decision.
Fighting housing discrimination
The Ragsdales made history in 1953 by moving into a home on West Thomas Road in the exclusive Encanto area north of the red lineRedlining
Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a...
which separated the segregated white and black neighborhoods in Phoenix. In that era, blacks were excluded from home ownership in north of the neighborhoods along Van Buren Street by banks who refused them loans for such houses and real estate agents who refused to show the houses to blacks. Eleanor was a licensed real estate agent with knowledge of the market and also fair-skinned enough to pass for white, both of which allowed her to find a suitable home in a white neighborhood without arousing suspicion; Lincoln viewed the home at night, being driven through an alley behind the house. The Ragsdales, unable to buy the house themselves, asked a white friend of Eleanor to purchase the house in his own name and then transfer the title to them.
They endured threats from neighbors, harassment from local police who would stop them while driving in their own neighborhood, and even graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
with racial epithets on their home. Despite never being accepted in their own neighborhood, the couple lived in the home for 17 years and raised their 4 children there, becoming a local symbol of resistance to housing discrimination. The model the Ragsdales had established for circumventing the controls on black home ownership were repeated by other blacks, often aided by Eleanor, to move into other homes in the all-white area.
NAACP and public accommodations
By the 1960s, Ragsdale and Rev. George B. Brooks, respectively vice-president and president of the Maricopa County NAACP chapter, were organizing protests and meeting with local business leaders to end workplace discrimination that barred blacks from skilled jobs. Ragsdale also began to target segregation in public accommodations and facilities, and in 1962, echoing the 1960 Greensboro Woolworth's sit-insGreensboro sit-ins
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests which led to the Woolworth's department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States....
, Lincoln and Eleanor organized protests at the local Phoenix Woolworth's stores.
Also interested in ending the conservative, all-white rule of the Republicans in local government, Ragsdale participated in the creation of the Action Citizens Committee and ran for Phoenix City Council in 1963 along with the Committee's slate of other candidates. While ultimately narrowly unsuccessful, the campaign drew attention to the lack of minorities and South Phoenix residents in government and led to the registration of many new African-American and Latino voters. In 1964 Ragsdale successfully lobbied the Phoenix City Council
Phoenix City Council
The Phoenix City Council includes the mayor and 8 councilmembers. Each councilmember is elected from a different district of the city of Phoenix. The councilmembers are elected to 4 year terms in a nonpartisan election.The Council:-External links:*...
for passage of a public accommodations law, and nearly a year later Arizona passed a statewide civil rights law, both similar in nature to the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
. 1964 also saw Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
give a speech at the Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
at Ragsdale's invitation, after which the Ragsdales hosted him in their home.
Work with the Hispanic community
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the black population of Phoenix remained under 5% of the city's total and Hispanics outnumbered blacks 3-to-1, necessitating more multicultural organizing than occurred elsewhere in the Civil Rights Movement.Later life
As a pilot, Ragsdale served on the Phoenix Municipal Aeronautics Advisory Board in the 1970s. Ragsdale later became involved in the intense fight to create a statewide Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Arizona, which finally passed after a voter-approved ballot measure in 1992. Ragsdale died on June 9, 1995 of colon cancer in his Paradise Valley, ArizonaParadise Valley, Arizona
Paradise Valley is a small, affluent town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. According to the 2005 Census Bureau, the population of the town was 14,558. Despite the town's relatively small area and population compared to other municipalities in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Paradise...
home. The executive terminal at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport was renamed the Lincoln J. Ragsdale Executive Terminal in his honor.