Eleanor and Lincoln Ragsdale were a driving force in the effort to desegregate Phoenix in the 1950s through the 1980s. But Lincoln would tell you it was Eleanor who was the motivator and instigator of protests and legislation that led to integration of schools as well as improvements in the workforce and living conditions for thousands of Black Arizonans.
According to Lincoln, “She had more guts about these things than I have ever had.”
Eleanor Odell Dickey was born on Feb. 23, 1926, in Collingdale, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her father was head superintendent of Eden Cemetery, one of the earliest Black cemeteries in the Philadelphia area. With the family home located on cemetery property, Eleanor and her siblings played hide and seek among the gravestones.
Demonstrators march in Phoenix on Jan. 19, 1987, to show their support for making Martin Luther King Jr. Day an official state holiday in Arizona.
In 1947, Eleanor graduated from what is now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor of science degree in education. Offered a fellowship to Howard University in Washington, D.C., she turned it down to take her first job as a kindergarten teacher at Phoenix’s segregated Dunbar Elementary School.
Shortly after arriving in Phoenix, Eleanor met Lincoln Johnson Ragsdale, Sr., a graduate of Tuskegee Army Air Field during World War II. He was stationed at Luke Air Force Base as one of the first Black pilots at Arizona’s military airport.
After the war, Lincoln opened a funeral home in Phoenix. The couple married on May 29, 1949, at Lincoln’s Chapel in the Valley Funeral Home.
The Ragsdales built a duplex house in one of Phoenix’s Black neighborhoods but as their family grew (they had four children born between 1951 and 1957), they looked around for a larger home.
By this time, Lincoln had also started insurance and real estate businesses. Eleanor stopped teaching to help with her husband’s entrepreneurial endeavors, earning her insurance and real estate licenses. Both were active in the NAACP, the Phoenix Urban League, and charter members of the Greater Phoenix Council for Civic Unity.
Eleanor found the house she wanted for her family. The only problem was the location — in an exclusive white neighborhood near Encanto Park. Blacks were not allowed to purchase homes that far north.
As a realtor, and of light skin, Eleanor boldly walked into the house to check it out. The realtor showing the house never suspected she was Black, but she knew she would not be allowed to buy the house once her race was discovered. Lincoln only saw the house from the back alley at night when Eleanor drove him by to see it.
Eleanor asked a white friend to purchase the house. While the house was still in escrow, the friend transferred title to Eleanor and Lincoln.
Their new neighbors were furious as they watched a Black family move into their elite neighborhood, but the contract was valid. Within a month, a delegation of neighbors knocked on the Ragsdales’ door, told the couple they would never be happy there, and offered to buy the house from them. The Ragsdales refused the proposition.
When derogatory words were painted on their house, they let them remain. They received threatening phone calls. The police often stopped Lincoln when he pulled into the neighborhood, refusing to believe he belonged there.
The Ragsdales lived in the home for 17 years, but their neighbors never accepted them.
Eleanor continued to help Black families buy homes and move into white neighborhoods around the Phoenix area.
In 1951, with the help of local civil rights groups, Eleanor and Lincoln set out to desegregate Phoenix schools. They tirelessly marched, protested, raised money, and lobbied the Legislature.
Their efforts finally paid off in 1953 when Judge Fred C. Struckmeyer ruled school segregation unconstitutional. “A half-century of intolerance is enough,” he proclaimed.
Sitting in the courtroom the day the decision came down, Eleanor could barely contain her emotions. “I felt it was a giant step in the right direction,” she said.
During this time, many Phoenix stores refused service to Blacks, banned them from lunch counters and rejected their job applications. In early 1962, more than 100 Black citizens marched on Phoenix’s Woolworth store protesting its discriminatory practice of refusing to hire Black personnel.
Later that year, Eleanor led a group to the Legislature asking that racial discrimination in public places be outlawed. She wrote to state representatives, raised money and spoke to women’s organizations to promote the legislation.
While picketing the state Capitol for what became known as the Public Accommodation Bill, Eleanor said, “It was the first time in my life that I had been spat upon and called ugly names. … They thought I was white, and they were wondering what I was doing standing in a picket line trying to help Black people.”
On June 3, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Phoenix to speak to an audience of over 3,000. Afterward, he was a guest in the Ragsdale home. Eleanor described King as a “warm, dedicated man … who really taught us the strength to love despite everything.”
In the 1970s, Eleanor worked with Black churches and civic organizations to award college scholarships and promote educational opportunities for Black students. She fought to eliminate discrimination of all races and raised funds for both Mexican and Black students to attend evening workshops and to obtain financial aid for classes at Arizona State University.
When former Gov. Evan Mecham negated the Martin Luther King holiday in 1987, Eleanor and Lincoln marched with 10,000 other protesters on the state Capitol. The Arizona Legislature approved the King holiday two years later.
Lincoln died in 1995, and Eleanor followed him three years later on May 5, 1998.
“I would have liked to have thought that because we were born in America, and we were trying to be upright citizens, that we should not have had to go through that kind of struggle,” Eleanor once said. “You have to live in the time in which you were born, and you have to deal with the challenges you meet at the time you are alive. And then you look back, and you have to be proud that you could be a part of it, and that you had enough strength, courage, and faith to have done it.”
