page_title: Lincoln Ragsdale
section_title: Early work
hierarchical_section_title: Lincoln Ragsdale / Civil Rights-era activism / Early work
caption_attribution_description: English: The Lincoln and Eleanor House at 1510 E. Jefferson in Phoenix. They were both influential civil rights leaders in Phoenix.
context_page_description: Lincoln Johnson Ragsdale Sr. was an influential leader in the Phoenix-area 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.
context_section_description: 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 War. 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.
caption: The first Ragsdale residence located at 1510 E. Jefferson St.
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJIFILM", "Image Model": "FinePix S9800 S9850 S9750", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Digital Camera FinePix S9800 S9850 S9750 Ver1.00", "Image DateTime": "2017:09:09 19:39:52", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "314", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "27188", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4181", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/220", "EXIF FNumber": "42/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Standard Output Sensitivity", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2017:09:09 19:39:52", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2017:09:09 19:39:52", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "39/5", "EXIF ApertureValue": "307/50", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "223/25", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "84/25", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "43/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "27020", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5287", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "5287", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}