Earl Wilcox grew up in South Phoenix and has been involved in the community for decades. He attended South Mountain High School and Phoenix Union High School. He played basketball at Phoenix College and Grand Canyon University. Wilcox served as the youngest representative in the Arizona State Legislature. He was a Justice of the Peace and the first Athletic Director at South Mountain Community College.
Earl Wilcox, grew up in the neighborhood of Grant Park near the Marcos de Niza Housing Projects. He and his ten brothers and three sisters were raised by his mother. His family was displaced when Arizona Public Service bought a large swath of land including his family home. The family moved south of the Salt River, and at the time, Earl attended South Mountain High School for one year in 1962.
After spending a year in South Phoenix, the Wilcox family moved back to the Grant Park/Harmon Park area, and into the newly built Marcos de Niza housing projects. However, they were eventually evicted because the family was in a higher tax bracket. Wilcox’s mother secured a home just south of the Capital complex in downtown Phoenix near Grant Park.
[Insert clip: 24:29, Growing up in South Phoenix]
At that time, it was not uncommon for families like Earl’s to be uprooted due to city and corporate expansion. In Phoenix specifically, the expansion of both Sky Harbor Airport and APS displaced Mexican-American families in many corners of the city.
As a young man, Wilcox emerged as a promising activist and politician. Despite his enviable career, his greatest regret was the outcome of Lowell School, near Grant Park. Lowell, throughout the 1940s and 1950s was a traditional one-building school with several stories. It looked a lot like Kenilworth School just a couple miles north. The outcomes for both schools, in Wilcox’s opinion, represent class and racial divisions in Phoenix. Today, Kenilworth is a preserved historic building. Meanwhile, Lowell was bulldozed and a prison-like compound school was built in its place. Kenilworth was in a much more affluent neighborhood than Lowell.
[Insert clip: 15:69]
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wilcox worked with leaders like Alfredo Gutierrez, Ronnie Lopez, and others on issues like education, immigration, housing, politics, and empowering the Chicano community. He helped found South Mountain Community College in two major ways. First, he helped identify an ideal location for the school while driving around South Phoenix with Alfredo de los Santos. Secondly, when SMCC opened, Wilcox was tapped to join the administration as the inaugural Athletic Director. At the time, Wilcox wasn’t sure he was up for the job, but the founding president, Dr. Raul Cardenas, knew that a famous name like Wilcox could attract local athletes to join the new college’s teams.
One of the first things Wilcox did was hire a famous local legend as the Men’s basketball coach. He brought in Jumping Joe Caldwell, an Olympian and a Sun Devil to start the basketball program at SMCC. Wilcox also hired Luis Lagunas, a star baseball player, to coach the baseball team.
[Insert clip: 1:00:52, Starting SMCC]
Earl Wilcox might be seen as a leader in the national Chicano movement, but his deepest affections lies in Central and South Phoenix, where he currently resides. He remains dedicated to enhancing South Phoenix through his activism and mentorship, persistently working to empower the community and amplify the voices of those often overlooked.
Insert Earl Wilcox Index
| Narrator | Earl Wilcox |
| Birthdate | 1949 |
| Place of Origin | Phoenix, AZ |
| Place of Residence | Phoenix, Arizona |
| Role | Business owner, politician, judge |
| Years active in South Phoenix | 1949- |
| Interview Date | October 11, 2023 |
| Location | El Portal Restaurant |
| Duration | 1:49:39 |
| Interviewed by | Faculty Researcher: Dr. Summer Cherland |
| Story Written by | Student Researcher: Iliana Munoz Faculty Co-Author: Dr. Summer Cherland |
South Phoenix Oral History Project 