Diane Ragsdale: A lifetime of community organizing in South Dallas
She grew up in Wheatley Place, where she still resides in her family’s home, and attended the Phyllis Wheatley School down the street before moving to the “Great” James Madison for junior high and high school. She graduated in 1970, a year before the federal courts ordered Dallas ISD to desegregate, which scattered many of her younger friends to schools across the city.
The Hon. Diane Ragsdale, who will turn 70 this year, has spent her entire life in South Dallas. Her story has been shaped by the neighborhood and, likewise, she has shaped her neighborhood in significant ways. She credits her successes to women in her life — her mother, who ensured her two daughters were steeped in political education and community organizing; Mrs. Juanita Craft, whose NAACP Youth Council was Ragsdale’s initial foray into activism; and the Hon. Elsie Faye Heggins, who appointed Ragsdale to the City Plan Commission before she ran for City Council.
She spent hours volunteering at the South Dallas Information Center in the home of another mentor, the Hon. Al Lipscomb, with whom she served on Council during her 1984-91 tenure. The founding of Innercity Community Development Corporation (ICDC) in 2004 was the culmination of these experiences.
Ragsdale’s work is far from finished. She’s still fighting some of the same issues that led her to run for Council, and as a registered nurse, she approaches the systems as she would her patients — a belief in preventative medicine that will treat the underlying causes, not just the symptoms.
What led you to run for Dallas City Council?
I believe, primarily, because of my mother, who was an activist herself. It was a belief in our household that we all should enjoy a decent standard of living — not just the Ragsdale household, but the neighborhood, everybody, should enjoy a decent standard of living. So to that end, she put my sister and I into different organizations, one of which, early on, was the NAACP Youth Council led by Mrs. [Juanita] Craft. I was 11; my sister was 13. It was a training ground, really, for activism. You know, oftentimes, you don’t give your parents enough credit, but she was the one who drove us there — meaning not just literally she would drive us there, but she was the motivating factor. So we would travel throughout the country to the NAACP conventions, we would register people to vote, we would sell memberships. And that’s the way we were both exposed to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the SCLC, the organization in which [the Rev. Martin Luther] King [Jr.] was involved. And of course, our god brother was across the street, James “Skip” Shockley, who was a member of the [Black] Panther Party. We didn’t necessarily become members but we worked with the free breakfast program and we participated in PE class, meaning political education, not physical education. And then we were part of the Black Women’s United Front.
So all of this was political development before running for council — community organizing and activism. And that’s important, because when we say, you know, how do we ensure that we all enjoy a decent standard of living? That’s a serious mission or vision.
Where did that come from for your mother?
I think for the most part, it came from her own experiences as a direct result of racism. She just was not going to be the one to sit down. Good God almighty, she wanted us involved.
So you understood at a very young age how important it was, if things were going to change, for you to be involved in the systems that were making those changes?
That is correct. And really, to be quite frank with you …
Please be frank with me, always.
The question is, how do we ensure? And really, I’ve got to be completely honest on this—
Please.
—I’ve been consistently trying to find the answer.
You’re still working on it, aren’t you?
That’s right. How do you — how do we — ensure that we all enjoy a decent standard of living? One thing that’s clear is that the systems that we have now have not provided all of us a decent standard of living. That means that this ain’t working. And that means that we need to— I’m going back to something that I’ve said on a regular basis, and I’ve got a girlfriend of mine that says, “Girl, you need to say something else!” And that is that we need to dismantle these existing systems. We can’t reform them. That’s been the problem, Keri, that we’ve attempted to reform these existing systems. I always say, you can’t reform or repair a foundation that’s rotten. You got to eliminate it and create a new one.
I’m not saying that the Dianes of the world and my ancestors haven’t done good work, but we continue to see the same issues over and over again. We continue to see homelessness. We continue to see people living in substandard housing. We continue to see— no disrespect, but you need a s