Minorities in old Phoenix

The 1948 graduating class from George Washington Carver High School.

From its founding until the late 20th century, Phoenix was an overwhelmingly Anglo city. But Phoenicians of color were always here. This column tells a bit of their stories.

Phoenix was settled by many Southerners and ex-Confederates, and it kept that Southern sensibility well into the 1960s. The white Chicagoans who started coming in the 1930s brought their own racial biases that for decades tore that city apart.

Into the early 1950s many places in Phoenix were legally segregated, including schools. Phoenix Union Colored High School, later George Washington Carver High, opened in 1926. Booker T. Washington and Paul Lawrence Dunbar elementary schools were built for younger "colored" children. (Washington is now home of New Times).

Deed covenants restricted many neighborhoods to "whites only." Minorities couldn't buy houses north of Van Buren Street well into the 1940s (and, as the 1913 advertisement shows, often couldn't buy south, either). Many stores and restaurants would not serve blacks, Mexicans, Japanese and American Indians. Swimming pools were segregated, too. Arizona had an anti-miscegenation law on the books from 1865 to 1962.

To be fair, there was no "colored waiting room" at Union Station and Encanto Park golf course accepted minority players in the 1940s. No lynching based on race is on record. Chinese-American children went to white public schools. Early minority businessmen such as Jose M. Iberri prospered. Mexicans who could "pass" for Anglos, such as the Van Harens, could move more freely. But the race and class lines were not hard to find. Phoenix always saw itself as an Anglo city (and the demographics back this up, especially after 1920), unlike old Tucson with its proud Spanish and Mexican traditions.

And consider: For decades the distance between the mansions of "Millionaires Row," Chinatown, and "the slums" were often only a few blocks. 

The Salt River Valley, of course, had once been part of Mexico. Prior to Columbus, it was the site of the most advanced irrigation-based civilization in the Americas before being abandoned by the Hohokam. By the time the cavalry forced peace on the Apaches and white families such as mine began arriving in the latter part of the 19th century, Hispanics and Pimas were living in the Valley, too.

The nature of the town was embodied in one of its founders, Jack Swilling. He had a Mexican wife, Trinidad Escalante, as well as an adopted Apache son, Guillermo.

In other words, Phoenix was never Des Moines in the desert.

II

An African Episcopal Methodist Church was established in 1887 (Mary Green, a domestic servant to former Confederate officer Columbus Gray, was the first recorded black resident in 1868). Frank Shirley, a barber who arrived in 1887, operated his shop downtown for years next to white businesses. Shirley was a mentor to John E. Lewis who went on to establish the Lewis Apartments, a hotel catering to black travelers. Dr. Winston Hackett, the town's first black physician, arrived in 1916.

With large-scale cotton farming beginning around World War I, larger numbers of African-Americans migrated here. Farm interests had already been recruiting, promising good wages and better conditions than in the South. For example, in 1910, Dwight Heard and Adolphus Bartlett hired the Colored American Realty Co. to attract black ranch and agricultural workers from Oklahoma and Texas.

By the 1920s, Phoenix was also a major point on the railroads, bringing Pullman porters who were among the foundations of the old black middle class. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union, played a major role in the Civil Rights Movement.

From 1918 to 1931, the town had the the Phoenix Tribune, its first black newspaper. In addition to local news, the Tribune closely followed American involvement in World War I. For example, the headline stripped across the Aug. 3, 1918 front page read, "Colored boys given rousing send-off" in Phoenix, and subhed "Drafted boys are shown every courtesy; in high spirits." Competition came a year later with the weekly Arizona Gleam, one of the few in the nation with a black female publisher, Ayra Hackett.

In a promotional article in 1919, the Tribune wrote:

Phoenix is the best city in the U.S.A.... The most friendly relations exist between the Caucasians and the Colored people. Now and then an antagonistic individual bobs up, but the good overwhelms the bad until you scarcely realize any evil has been done.... If you know all the real joy of living in a land that abounds with figs, olives, peaches, apples, grapes, honey and all the good things that were promised to the children of Israel they obeyed God, you must come to Arizona.

The Phoenix Indian School opened in 1891. At least a few hundred members of different tribes lived within the city limits in the first decades of the 20th century. Some sold handcrafts to passengers at Union Station. Yet American Indians were not allowed to vote in Arizona until the 1940s, despite being granted U.S. citizenship during the 1920s.

Mexican-Americans were the largest minority of young Phoenix, mostly working in the fields or the Produce District downtown. Analysis by Keith Blakeman indicates that they made up 21 percent of the town's population in 1910, far more than previously thought. Many were attracted by the prospect of owning their own homes or farms. Others fled the Mexican revolution.

St. Mary's Catholic Church segregated its services, leading Mexican-American leaders to build the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church (right) in 1928, among the many separate institutions Hispanics would establish. The Methodist-Episcopal Church established La Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida in 1892, the first protestant church catering to Hispanics. Friendly House started in 1920 as an education center for refugees but grew into a large social-service provider that remains today. Hispanics could choose from two Spanish-language newspapers: the long-running El Sol, founded in 1939 by Jesús Franco and Josefina Carascosso de Franco, and El Mensajero, under Publisher Jesus Melendrez, which operated from 1900 to 1945.

Hispanics were segregated into barrios, in and outside the city limits. Among them: Golden Gate (Sacred Heart Church still stands there, fenced in, after the neighborhood was leveled for Sky Harbor), Campito, Cuatro Milpas, La Sonorita, Harmon Park, El Campito, Central Park, Green Valley, San Francisco, and Grant Park. Gold Alley, just west of Chinatown, was a middle-class Mexican-American neighborhood. Author Stella Pope Duarte has written eloquently about the old barrios, many of which held together well into the 1980s. In at least one case, disreputable Anglos swindled Mexicans (and Japanese) on land deals near the South Mountains. 

Hispanic and black neighborhoods sometimes blended together (Grant Park is an example), and some Chinese and poorer Anglos lived there, too. Many minorities lived in rural settings as did Anglos.

Chinese immigrants helped build the railroads in California and much of the West. But they came to Phoenix as entrepreneurs, fleeing discrimination in California. They established laundries, restaurants, green grocers and other shops. They were first confined to a small Chinatown (actually the second one in the town, moved a few blocks after Anglo resistance and threats) centered in the area around today's downtown baseball stadium. (The railroad builders in Arizona were heavily Pimas and Hispanic, the traqueros).

In the mid-1890s, some Anglo business leaders tried to buy buildings there and force the Chinese out. They were only temporarily successful. Chinese businesses were popular, for example Sing Yee's American Kitchen on Central north of the tracks, opened in 1900. Chinese also ran several groceries outside Chinatown. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1938.

Japanese came from California in the early 20th century and farmed around Phoenix. They proved especially successful on the land near the South Mountains along Baseline Road and in introducing new cash crops.

Here's where the city broke down in the 1920 Census with a total population of more than 29,000: Anglos 87 percent, Mexicans 8 percent, blacks 4 percent and Chinese less than 1 percent.

Although heavily Anglo, Phoenix was a multi-racial society. Multi-ethnic, too: Greeks, for example, ran many restaurants and other businesses. Russian immigrants were recruited to work in the sugar-beet fields outside Glendale. Jewish merchants were among the backbone of the central business district. Najeeb Basha moved from Lebanon, eventually arriving in the Valley in 1910 where his family would build a grocery empire.

III

Students and teachers in front of all-black George Washington Carver High School, 1942. (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU archives).

But exclusion from many jobs, segregation, lack of investment in minority neighborhoods and poor education funding carried enormous consequences. So did hostility from many Anglos and, at best, disinterest by City Hall. South Phoenix was not annexed into the city until 1960. Phoenix was a place that had a "wrong side of the tracks," in this case the Southern Pacific. Although its population was diverse (and in south Phoenix heavily rural), many casually called it "Niggertown."

Black travelers during Jim Crow were not welcome in many establishments. One antidote was the Negro Motorist Green Book, which from 1936 to the early 1960s featured motels, restaurants, gas stations, and other places that would serve African-Americans on the road. In the 1949 edition, only one hotel — the Winston Inn at 1342 E. Jefferson St. — one service station, and two restaurants were listed in Phoenix. Two "tourist homes," four beauty parlors, two barber shops, two drug stores and one tavern, night club, and garage also made the book. (The only accommodation listed in Tucson was one restaurant.) Eastlake Park was listed as "colored" on gas-station maps.

A survey during the Depression found the largely African-American neighborhood  around 7th Avenue and Buckeye to be one of the worst slums in the nation — this in a city of only 65,000. Plumbing and paved streets were virtually nonexistent.

Here was where the Roman Catholic priest Father Emmett McLoughlin became a legendary advocate for the poor. He was instrumental in getting the Matthew Henson Homes project, which for decades was safe and attractive, before the crime and social breakdown of the 1970s took hold. Art Hamilton, the future Democratic leader of the Arizona House of Representatives, was among those who grew up in Henson Homes.

The Arizona Alien Land Law of 1921 was aimed at preventing the Japanese from owning property. They found ways around the law and continued their success, the Japanese population in the county hitting 879 in 1930.

Envious whites organized attacks on the Japanese in 1934. The sheriff served injunctions — against the Japanese farmers and white farmers who helped them. As with the 21st century's SB 1070, the attacks against Japanese in Arizona became an international source of condemnation.

Yet it's important to see these citizens as more than exploited victims. Each group formed its own associations and places of worship. For example, the Colored Masonic Hall was located at Fourth and Jefferson Streets. Cordial relations with Anglos were not uncommon. Many owned property, built and ran businesses and created proud and thriving neighborhoods.

They were also sometimes professionals. For example, an embalmer, blacksmith, printer, shoemaker, barbers and beauticians are listed in the 1915 Phoenix Colored Directory. Frank Shirley, an African-American barber, provided services for both blacks and whites at his Fashion Barber Shop and Bath Rooms. There were also teachers, dentists, doctors and ministers. In the 1920s, Marshall Shelton, an African-American realtor, developed the Portland Tract and Acre City subdivisions. The Phoenix Police had hired black and Hispanic officers since 1919. American Indians also served with distinction as police officers.

Most white hotels turned away black guests in the first half of the 20th century. As a result, black businessmen filled the void with their own hotels and boarding houses. One of the most celebrated was the Rice Hotel, founded by contractor and real-estate agent Hughie Rice. It hosted such jazz legends as Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton, as well as baseball great Jackie Robinson.

Arizona and Phoenix saw a brief flowering of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s. It began recruiting in spring 1921, with an announcement in the Arizona Republican. The Klan railed against Mexicans and Catholics, called for Prohibition enforcement — and soon turned to violence.

The white principal of the Lehi School was attacked by armed, masked men who branded his with "KKK" in acid, for alleged "moral misconduct" against a female student. The perpetrators were let off by Mesa authorities but later indicted by the county. A few days later, the "Camelback Klan No. 6" sent four hooded klansmen to a church to hand the minister a $100 check and letter of appreciation for "law, order, decency and Christianity."  A Klan newspaper, The Crank, began publication in 1922, edited by Dr. H.A. Hughes.

Gov. Thomas Campbell claimed he had a roster of 300 Klan members, many of them prominent citizens. Maricopa County alone had four Klan chapters. In 1924, the Klan was blamed for three acts of violence against African-Americans and one Catholic. At the trial of Jones' attackers, it came out that Klan members included the county Sheriff, several deputies, and County Attorney R.E.L. Shepherd.

Although the trial resulted in a hung jury, a grand jury was convened to examine Klan activities. Shepherd later admitted his membership. A backlash finally resulted in a 1923 "anti-mask" bill in the Legislature, making wearing a hood or mask a felony. The next year, both political parties incorporated strong anti-Klan positions in their platforms. Arizona Grand Dragon McCord Harrison incorporated the Klan again in 1925 and 1927, but it was a spent force in the state.

As the city grew in World War II and saw an influx of soldiers, there's at least one instance of a riot involving black and white soldiers in 1942. This apparently included random shooting into black homes by the authorities. The episode could be a rich vein for the enterprising historian.

Also in 1942, Japanese-Americans were removed in as part of the shameful internment carried out by the Roosevelt administration — U.S. 60 (Van Buren and Grand) marked the line between those sent to concentration camps, and those allowed to stay. Although Japanese farmers continued to work the land north of the line — their movements restricted — those with farms around the South Mountains were interned.

IV

Change began slowly after the war, as city leaders sought to project a progressive image to attract business and the Civil Rights Movement gathered force. Chinese-Americans moved rapidly into the mainstream. Before chain convenience stores, they owned scores of groceries all over the city. In 1943, Walter Ong had founded the Retail Grocers Association of Arizona, which came to have both Anglo and Chinese members. In 1956, he was named Phoenix Man of the Year. Wing F. Ong (above left) was elected to the state Legislature in 1946, a national first. The city's tiny Chinatown disappeared as Chinese were free to move anywhere. A member of the large Tang clan bought land north of my great-aunt's acreage in the late 1940s and by the time I came along he had subdivided most of it to become handsome Arcadia-sized ranch houses on lots with citrus trees.

Also in the 1940s, William Everett Bass, a master chef, became the first African-American to have his own cooking segment on a TV show in America on Phoenix's KPHO.

Arthur Van Haren Jr. (Hispanic despite the Dutch surname) served in the Navy, becoming the top Arizona ace of World War II. He went on to a successful legal career in Phoenix after the war. Silvestre Herrera was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in France (I had the privilege of meeting him when I was a Boy Scout, which met at the Luke Greenway American Legion Post).

Japanese returned from the camps (some had been allowed back as early as 1943), and, with the Alien Land Law declared unconstitutional, were able to own land in their own names. Those from south of U.S. 60 sometimes found their houses vandalized, but immediately began rebuilding. The relatively small Japanese community would again become one of the most innovative and productive elements of Salt River Valley agriculture. The Japanese flower gardens along Baseline became a beloved treasure until it was turned into sprawl in the 1990s.

Phoenix ended de jure school segregation ahead of the Brown decision in 1954; the move was led by Barry Goldwater, who had also opened his family stores (and employment) to minorities. Phoenix also slowly moved to desegregate restaurants, accommodations and public housing — at least on paper. The 1950s also saw the first African-Americans elected to the state Legislature: Hayzel Daniels and Carl Sims. Daniels, from Tucson, was the first black to graduate from the University of Arizona School of Law and be admitted to the state bar. Sims, a one-time Maricopa County deputy, was a strong voice for school integration. Lincoln Ragsdale (above right), former Tuskegee airman, funeral director, businessman and civil rights leader, reputedly the richest African-American in the city, broke the color barrier in 1953 by moving to the WASP-y Encanto area (facing much hostility) — later the family would move to Scottsdale.

Ragsdale was instrumental in breaking the color line. One example was a black soldier killed in the Korean War. Phoenix's Greenwood Memorial Park refused to accept the remains of PFC Thomas Reed in 1951. Ragsdale led a national effort to publicize the injustice. It took three months, but Reed was finally buried in the veteran's section of Phoenix's most important cemetery.

Adam Diaz, left, was the first Hispanic elected to city council in the 1950s, followed by Morrison Warren, an African-American, in 1965. By the early 1960s, Thomas Tang was a city councilman and vice mayor. Valdemar Cordova was named a Superior Court judge in 1965 on his way to the federal bench. Calvin Goode served 22 years on City Council and the Municipal Building is now named in his honor. I had black, Mexican-American, Chinese and American Indian classmates at Kenilworth School, and when our Scout troop would meet at the Luke-Greenway American Legion Post, it wasn't unusual to see a Mexican-American vet along with the Anglos at the bar. In 1974, Raul Castro was elected governor.

But beneath these successes, de-facto segregation often continued. Poor minorities were stuck with the worst schools, poor health care, neglected neighborhoods and lack of opportunity. Hostility didn't end at class. When Hamilton was took his seat in the state House of Representatives in 1973, "the speaker of the House, Stan Akers, looked straight at him, leaned to his microphone, and started whistling Dixie over the House sound system," according to New Times.

Immigrant farmworkers were treated horribly, including on Arrowhead Ranch, citrus groves partly owned by the Goldwaters. Cesar Chavez was seen by the Anglos as little better than a communist. And Phoenix's old Southern sensibility, leavened with Midwestern racism, morphed into the John Birch Society mentality that created today's Kookocracy. Members of the GOP, including future Chief Justice William Rehnquist, worked at vote suppression in south Phoenix in the 1960s as part of the party's Operation Eagle Eye.

When our senior minister at Central United Methodist Church, the late Kermit Long, marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in south Phoenix in 1964, this bastion of establishment churches was the target of white protesters. No wonder that in 1960s Phoenix, as historian Philip Vandermeer writes, "schools remained functionally segregated...(and)...access to public accommodations remained a major problem." Few minorities were hired for higher-end or professional-track jobs.

Nor did Phoenix escape the riots of the decade. On July 25-26, 1967, riots occurred in the inner city, including around Eastlake Park. At least one sniper incident happened. The Johnson administration's Kerner Commission called it "a major disturbance." Calm was restored thanks to the Rev. George Brooks; Mayor Milt Graham held a community meeting at Eastlake Park. The Pulliam Press downplayed the event. (Interestingly, during the 1960s Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad owned a home in Paradise Valley).

Phoenix's Mexican-Americans organized a chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in 1941. Chicano politics became a force in the 1960s and 1970s, including activism at ASU led by Alfredo Gutierrez. He joined with Joe Eddie Lopez and others to form Chicanos Por La Causa. Rosendo Gutierrez (no relation) was a major force in Mexican-American politics in the 1960s and 1970s, winning a City Council seat but losing the mayoral election of 1977 to Margaret Hance. Alfredo went on to become Democratic leader of the state Senate.

Minority neighborhoods suffered especially from concentrated poverty, lack of infrastructure and the city allowing polluting industries to locate nearby. The Maricopa Freeway had been slammed through historic barrios in the 1960s. Soon others, including Golden Gate, were wiped away to make room for Sky Harbor expansion and other city projects.

V.

Much more was to change, especially from the huge waves of Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants that began in the 1980s. Combined with the Sky Harbor expansion, these hundreds of thousands of new migrants were highly destabilizing to the historic Mexican-American community. The historic black community dispersed and dwindled.

White flight, and class flight, accelerated with the vast new sprawl oases that opened up with the freeway system. Maryvale became "Scaryvale." A city that only yesterday seemed so new, and touted its "classless" Western society, was filled with a poor underclass stuck in linear slums. By the 2000s, Phoenix also had the nation's largest population of urban American Indians, most living on the margins. But the reservations bordering the city became potent with gambling revenue and water rights.

Unlike Los Angeles, Phoenix never developed real minority political power. Firebrand student activist Alfredo Gutierrez became part of the establishment. Latino organizations dependent on City Hall partnerships can't be adversaries of the Anglo power elite. The old black leadership died off. Amazingly, Phoenix went for years without a single Hispanic city councilman.

Phoenix was a city with a commanding Anglo majority for most of its history. But that is changing. As of 2020, Phoenix was 43% percent Hispanic and growing poorer, while surrounded by large, newer and more affluent Anglo suburbs.

But Phoenix as the "Mexican Detroit" won't help property values in north Scottsdale. With the persistent "sweeps" by longtime Sheriff Joe Arpaio and anti-Hispanic rhetoric and laws, Arizona did itself no good. The talented "brown people" of the world, the ones with lots of income, will think twice before choosing to come there. Intolerance and political extremism are bad for business.

Meanwhile, the challenges for a city with a huge number of low-skilled, first generation immigrants are growing substantially in a deindustrialized America, much less one in a state with abysmal public schools, especially for poor minorities. Employment centers have shifted out of the city proper and far from minority neighborhoods while public transportation is inadequate.

With hostile Anglo power in the suburbs and the Legislature, Phoenix struggles to leverage this human capital into the advanced economy, to everybody's advantage. There's too much screaming going on. "What part of illegal don't you understand!" This from Anglos who profit from a cheap and frightened workforce to build houses, operate lawn services, and provide housekeepers.

Interestingly, it was they who were afraid when an estimate 100,000 Hispanics and others marched in Phoenix in 2006 to protest lack of progress in providing a path to citizenship for illegals. But it did not turn into a political movement.

The city of Phoenix has come a long way from its Southern, segregationist roots. It named a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the 1980s when Gov. Evan Mecham was resisting it. A Hispanic city manager was in office in the 2000s. The city itself is among the most progressive and inclusive places in the state.

But county and state policies are a serious headwind. For example, SB 1070, the anti-immigrant law, caused huge damage to the convention business. Investment from Mexico prefers friendlier states such as California and Texas. San Antonio has made big progress in attracting Mexican and Latin American capital, while Phoenix is unfairly lumped in with the rest of Arizona as the land of intolerance.

Hispanic voter turnout was low for decades. Here history is turned on its head from the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement. There was no need for an Operation Eagle Eye or other measures. The Hispanics were self-suppressing their votes. Or they were when I first wrote this: By 2020 that changed dramatically as Latino turnout soared.

Minorities — Gallery (click for a larger view):

The complexity of the color line in early Phoenix. At the Commercial Hotel in the 1890s, shoeshine man Sam Berry, left, rests a hand on young Arthur Luhrs. Billy Matthews and George H.N. Luhrs, complete the portrait.

Segregated shelter for "Negro cotton pickers" during the Great Depression.

A student in formal wear at Carver High School in 1940 (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).

Choir in front of George Washington Carver High School, undated (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ ASU Archives).

Booker T. Washington Memorial Hospital, 1342 E. Jefferson St., 1927.

Arthur Randolph Smith, founder of the Phoenix Tribune.

The congregation at Iglesia Presbyteria church (McCulloch Collection/ASU Archives).

A Black man hauling potable water in 1940. Some of Phoenix's poorest neighborhoods lacked running water (Russell Lee, Library of Congress).

The Indian Sanatorium at 16th Street and Indian School Road in 1940. The future Phoenix Indian Medical Center would be built slightly north (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).

Japanese workers in a strawberry field in South Phoenix, 1934 (McCulloch Collection/ASU Archives).

Immaculate Heart church in the 1920s. The Mexican-American community built it because they were forced to attend segregated services at St. Mary's.

In 1953, the Arizona Sun reports the repeal of segregated schools. Barry Goldwater was instrumental in making this happen.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Tanner Chapel in 1964. When the senior minister of my church, Central Methodist, marched with King in south Phoenix, the church was picketed for weeks (ASU Archives).

Mrs. White's Golden Rule Cafe at 800 E. Jefferson Street has been serving soul food since 1964. Owner Elizabeth White was born in 1923.

The Calderon Ballroom on south 16th Street in an undated photo. For years it hosted Latino and black performers, including Ray Charles and James Brown, with dancing until 1 a.m. It was one of the highlights of the Golden Gate barrio.

Coretta Scott King and Cesar Chavez at the Santa Rita Center, 1017 E. Hadley, in 1972. Chavez was in his "Fast For Justice" after the Legislature outlawed the right of farmworkers to organize.

Raul Castro, Arizona's first Hispanic governor, outside the capitol in the mid-1970s.

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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.

Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.

 

 

Comments

[Emil Pulsifer]

Kudos to Mr. Talton for his invaluable historical background and insights.

Race relations and attitudes don't grow out of a vacuum: they are created and passed down over generations. By offering historical context, Mr. Talton has explained present circumstances.

It's extremely important to remember, because there is a tendency to imagine that in the post-civil rights era, that prejudice is a thing of the past. But it isn't. Segregation is no longer the result of legal factors, but social and economic factors insure that neither segregation, nor the prejudices which it tends to perpetuate, have disappeared.

Housing communities which are significantly segregated by race, especially when reinforced by familial conditioning, make social mixing unlikely, even when students are bused to racially mixed public schools (instead of being further cloistered in private schools).

A recent newspaper story claimed that the new driving factor behind school busing isn't race, but rather economics: the attempt is to reduce concentration of empoverished students in empoverished districts where inferior funding may result in inferior schooling. But of course, in a country where minorities have traditionally been economically oppressed, minorities remain substantially behind economically.

When two groups begin a footrace under circumstances in which one group is given a substantial head start, it isn't surprising when the latter group stays ahead. Naturally, there are exceptions, since both groups contain individuals of exceptional ability, but as groups the distance relation tends to be maintained in the absence of aggressive measures to remedy it.

Now that affirmative action has been deemed, by conservatives and by much of the political mainstream, to be unnecessary if not reverse racism, economic differences may not only persist, but actually widen. The law of compound interest implies that those who have more to begin with will tend to increase their absolute wealth advantage over time.

In any case, it's remarkable how persistent historical conditioning can be, and how it may persist even when the original reasons are long forgotten.

I sometimes hear young Black men on the bus referring to one another as "nigga" when they want to challenge or disparage each other. I don't attempt to interject myself in these exchanges, being White and not knowing the individuals involved, but if I were Black and had children, and heard one of mine use this term with respect to one of his brothers, he or she would get one warning, and if it happened a second time, a mouthful of soap and water.

I believe that the term originated with White slaveowners, then spread to Black slaves who, in arguments, attempted to claim superiority by aping the master's language. Today, no young Black man would knowingly perpetuate this, but it seems that old habits die hard and sometimes lose the thread of their original context.

[soleri]

Emmett McLoughlin hearkens back to a day when there was a left in Arizona. Much of it came from organized labor (copper mining being the state's major industry) and Arizona was a Democratic state during his heyday. Eleanor Roosevelt came out to inspect his good works and bestow her own benefaction, as it were.

My father came to Phoenix in 1948. The family station wagon blew a gasket in Wickenburg on a trek to Santa Barbara where Dad hoped to land a surgical residency. Out of money, the family ventured to Phoenix instead. My sister and I were born in St Monica's Hospital, which McLoughlin founded and directed. McLoughlin left the priesthood around that time and the hospital became secular (Memorial Hospital). My father was taken in with McLoughlin's charisma and pursued his residency there.

Dad was an Okie and a vintage Democratic New Deal Democrat. During the 1950s, he was Ernest McFarland's personal physician. But the political complexion of the state shifted dramatically as the state boomed and organized labor shrank in relative importance. By the 60s, the state had become a reliably Republican state although its ideologues were not as nihilistic as today's True Believers.

My parents voted for Nixon in 1972 (the kids for McGovern), and that sea change was as much about race as the shifting economic landscape. Nixon (and Pat Buchanan) knew America's soul was no longer tethered to the workplace so much as the neighborhood. The new political consciousness was keyed less to economic class and more to the dog-whistle politics of race. 30-some years later, Republicans practice this strategy with an even more maniacal intensity.

Growing up in the 50s, I don't remember Arizona as really that mean. A classmate of mine of Chinese heritage remembers it differently (she married Matt Fong who was California's Republican nominee for the US Senate in 1998). There were plenty of Hispanic kids at Sunnyslope High and my sister dated some of them. Steven Spielberg went to Arcadia High before his family decamped to Saratoga, CA after his junior year. He said he never heard anti-semitic slurs here but plenty over there.

Arizona is so utterly different today than 50 years ago that comparisons are pointless. The nation changed too, and like Arizona, not always for the better. We're a state marooned in a losing economic paradigm with little but memories of an long real-estate boom to buffer the pain. It's sad to see people cling to outmoded strategies but you can call that the failure of success. We'll keep doing what we do because it's all we know.

[phxSUNSfan]

After speaking to older relatives, including my parents, I was told that many went to school (in the 1940's and 1950's) with White classmates. Granted, they went to school in smaller communities west of Phoenix (Buckeye, Tolleson, Glendale, and Peoria). Were the schools segregated for all minorities in earlier years? Did this only occur in Phoenix? I know segregation was made legal in 1909 in the Arizona Territory. However, I cannot find examples beyond the George Washington Carver High School (Phoenix Union Colored High School) of schools in Arizona that were segregated. My great aunt, in her late 80's, remembers being "segregated" until learning to speak better English. But she also doesn't remember any Black students in her school.

[cal Lash]

https://www.phoenix.gov/pddsite/Documents/pdd_hp_pdf_00044.pdf

Education
Prior to 1900, Mexican students attended the same public schools as Anglo children. It is known
that Mexican families sent their children to the first Phoenix public school classroom in 1871. This
classroom was held in the Territorial Courthouse on south 1st Avenue, at that time known as
Cortez Street. The first separate school building, the Central School, was made of adobe and
located on Central Avenue, two blocks north of Washington Street. Phoenix’s first high school
began in 1895 in the Clark Churchill residence at 5th and Van Buren Streets.53
Under Father Jouvenceau, St. Mary’s Church established a parochial school in 1892, where things
were different. Anglo children attended classes in a brick building located at 4th and Monroe
Streets, while Mexican children went to classes in a frame home the Church purchased, located at
Van Buren and 4th Streets. Five years later, Father Novatus erected a new brick school and named
it San Antonio’s, for the Mexican children. San Antonio’s School provided free tuition while St.
Mary’s School charged for tuition. The intention of separate schools was to enable Spanishspeaking
children to learn enough English at San Antonio’s to transfer over to St. Mary’s Grammar
School, though this was not always the practice. In any case, the enrollment at San Antonio’s was
always higher than at St. Mary’s Grammar School, and the former always had fewer teachers. The
teachers at San Antonio’s were not paid for their work, while the nuns who taught in St. Mary’s
Grammar School received a salary.54
In the 1890s, Phoenicians of Mexican descent attempted to make public schools and the overall
society “more bilingual.” In 1893 an Arizona legislator called for teachers “to pass an examination
in Spanish and teach Spanish to their pupils.”55 The Anglo population rallied against the idea and
supported existing legislation where “all schools must be taught in the English language.”56 A
political firestorm of opposition against bilingual education in the public schools ensued, with
Phoenicians questioning the American loyalties and patriotism of Hispanics. The Phoenix press
continued to fuel anti-bilingual education rhetoric and hinted racist overtones when Anglo critics
suggested that schools “teach the Mexicans English instead of trying to make Mexicans of the
Americans.” Clearly issues of language and “American loyalty” have a long history in Phoenix.57

[cal Lash]

http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ815172

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2293226?sid=21105580615883&uid=2&uid=4

[JJ]

Just plain brilliant. Thanks for taking the time to compile and write this.

[Rob Spindler]

Thanks Rogue, very good overview. There's always more to the stories of our diverse communities and we're still digging out details. Lincoln Ragsdale's work for the Maricopa County NAACP is well documented in Matthew Whitaker's fine book Race Work, but since publication some additional data points have emerged in the Lincoln Ragsdale Emancipation Proclamation audio recordings here: https://repository.asu.edu/items/17376 Primarily Sunday morning gospel music broadcasts created to celebrate the proclamation centennial, most episodes include Ragsdale's brief updates on NAACP work in Phoenix.In one episode Ragsdale provides a brief eyewitness account of the El Ray Cafe sit-in in 1963. Use the time code index document to select specific tapes and excerpts by time code. I'm also working on a long term project to digitize bilingual Japanese internment camp newsletters from Rivers AZ, many Phoenicians were likely imprisoned there.This is being OCRed so individual names can be found.

[Diane D'Angelo]

Thank you for a fabulous read, Jon. It captures the essence of Phoenix. So many dichotomies at play.

[Hattie]

I was thinking, "Too long," and ended up reading the whole thing with open-mouthed fascination.
Phoenix seemed to me on a the couple of visits I have made like a place where the past had been wiped away. Those lonely, barren streets must have been lively once, I think.
You brought it back to life.
The way forward is for Mexicans to gain political power and put the energy of their people to work rebuilding the community.

[Edward Cannon]

I assume that Arizona will always be jerkwater environment until eventual human evolution takes place, Which could take generations to unfold ..""

[Sandra Stanton Cotey Clark]

Jon, I see so much of this segregation has taken place in my lifetime (80 years). Because I grew up in Clifton, Arizona, I was somewhat insulated from this.

Earl Randolph, Jr. was a student at Clifton High School and graduated in 1956 and went on to graduate from NAU. He scored more basketball points than any other high school student.

I think my grandfather, A.C. Stanton, who was on the school board expedited the processes for Earl and his sisters to be CHS students. It. Probably helped that He was on the CHS School Board. There’s more to this story................!

[John Ortega]

Interesting article, lots of good information. However I wouldn’t take the 1920 census as gospel. A hundred years have passed and the non-white population census count is still dismal. Can’t imagine how bad it must have been then.