Lincoln Ragsdale Jr. is a longtime Phoenix resident. His parents, Eleanor and Lincoln, Sr. were business owners and civil rights activists. When Eleanor purchased a home in the Encanto district, members of Ragsdale family became the first African Americans to defy Phoenix’s redlining laws. Among other businesses, the Ragsdales owned South Phoenix Mortuary, one of the only funeral homes in the Phoenix area to serve Black families.
Lincoln Ragsdale, Jr. was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix on May 25, 1955. He remembered, “My dad came here in1946 to integrate Luke Air Force Base as an experiment because everything was still a segregated. They didn’t integrate the Armed Forces right away. They formed the Air Force Base, brought my father out here because he just finished graduating from the Tuskegee flying program and Luke Air Force Base has an advanced training program. My dad was flying the p-51 at the time, so he came out here in advanced gunnery training in the p-51. And they put him with a white white roommate from Georgia and he moved out into his car because he wasn’t going to stay in the same room with an African-American.
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His parents met and married in Phoenix, and the Ragsdales made their home in the Phoenix area. His parents Lincoln, Sr. and Eleanor broke the color barrier when they purchased their home in the all-white Encanto neighborhood the year before he was born. Since the Ragsdales were the only family living in his neighborhood, he was the only African American student in an all-white school. Ragsdale remembered that school was “great until the 5th grade.” As he got older, he started getting into trouble, and after a few fights his family moved him to the Osborne School District. He finished high school early and then attended Phoenix College. Later, Ragsdale spent a semester in an aviation program at Cochise College, where he earned both a private and commercial pilot’s license by the time he was eighteen years old. After that, he moved on to Arizona State University. He graduated in 1977.
Ragsdale grew up watching his parents as active members of Phoenix’s Black business and social communities. They are widely recognized for integrating the all-white Encanto neighborhood, as discussed in Matthew Whitaker’s book, Race Work, but Eleanor and Lincoln, Sr. made an indelible mark on South Phoenix business and community, as well. His parents were originally in the funeral business, owing two funeral homes that served Black families. The first was in Eastlake on 11th Street and Jefferson, and the second, South Phoenix Mortuary, was at 7007 South Central.
The Ragsdales diversified their business interests, branching out into insurance, real estate, and commercial development. Their downtown and South Phoenix buildings leased to restaurants, banks, and a building occupied by the Justice of the Peace at one time.
Even though his family lived north of the Salt River, Lincoln was familiar with South Phoenix from a young age, because he worked for the family business. He started driving a limousine for the mortuary at sixteen years old. He recalled, “We were in the mortuary business and … some guy didn’t show up. My dad got me up and said hey, I need you to drive a limousine to for him go pick up the family. I said, Dad. Look, I just got my driver’s license. Actually, I still only have my permit. I’m not supposed to even drive without an adult in the car because look I need your help. So he gave me a white shirt, which was way too big. I said well dad, you know, I’m just letting you know, I shouldn’t be driving this limousine without an adult. He said we’ll go pick up the adults and you’ll be legal. So I got when you got the people and so I started driving limousines at sixteen. And so in doing such we had a lot of funerals that were in South Phoenix because it was predominantly Black… South Phoenix Presbyterian Church and South Phoenix Baptist Church and all the churches throughout this area, you know predominantly were black and so I would be down in South Phoenix all the time basically driving and picking up families and going to churches.
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Ragsdale later attended a twelve-month mortuary program in Atlanta and became licensed as an embalmer and funeral director. He began running the funeral homes at twenty-four years old, and spent about fifteen years in the family business. At the time, Ragsdale helped to integrate the city’s funeral and mortuary industry. His dad had helped get the process started in 1964, before anyone else in the city was serving diverse families, and Lincoln continued the tradition by hiring staff members of all races “to serve the majority population of Phoenix,” which was both white and Hispanic at the time. Ultimately, he discovered that “the funeral home business was not my passion,” so he decided to keep the land but lease the business to the company that runs South Phoenix Mortuary today.
Ragsdale knew how crucial of an impact his family had on the South Phoenix community and Arizona history. He saw for himself that “there’s always a way, if you work at trying to find a way.” Today, he is a real estate agent and an avid golfer.
Lincoln Ragsdale Interview Index
| Narrator | Lincoln Ragsdale, Jr. |
| Birthdate | May 25, 1955 |
| Place of Origin | Phoenix, AZ |
| Place of Residence | Phoenix Metro, AZ |
| Occupation | Real Estate, Development, Mortician (ret) |
| Years Active in South Phoenix | 1955- |
| Recording Duration | 55:33 |
| Recording Date, Location | November 10, 2023, SMCC |
| Interviewed By | Faculty Researchers Dr. Summer Cherland and Mary Nunn Student Researchers Sincere Myles and Gianna Quinonez |
| Story Written By | Faculty Researcher Summer Cherland |
South Phoenix Oral History Project 