Segregatory historical housing patterns live on today
Shannon Fojtik
TUCSON, Ariz. - Segregation in Tucson, Arizona is not lost to the history books.
This is a word typically associated with the Civil Rights movement and with the historical separation of races in society. The occurrence of segregation is usually thought to have ended in the 50s, but it is still in existence in Tucson and it persists strongly in ways many Tucsonans are unaware of.
In 1865 the American Civil War ended, and with it millions of former slaves were suddenly citizens of the United States of America, although they were not typically allowed to mingle with the white members of society. Segregation would not end for over 100 years, though its problems with equality among the races is still an issue that persists today, with Tucson proving to not be an exception.
When Arizona became a state in 1912, the city of Tucson boasted a rapidly growing population due to its potential to become a new, thriving urban hub, according to the City of Tucson.
With the growing population, there were many new property owners with hopes of building their homes in the city. This was possible for only whites in incorporated Tucson, however, as minorities, including Hispanics, Native Americans and African Americans were not allowed to own property in the city limits.
Because of this limitation put on owning property in the city, minorities in the Tucson area were forced to buy land that was either far south or far west, according to Jaynie Adams, a researcher and graduate student with the History Department at the University of Arizona who is focusing on historical preservation and housing patterns in Tucson.
Since segregation did not start to disappear until 1954 in the United States, the time before and leading up to this from the expansion of Tucson since Arizona statehood provided decades of solidification of these separated neighborhoods in Tucson.
These neighborhoods continued being relatively divided based on race and prove to be that way still today, according to Adams, and this separation may be partially because of city planners and even because of members of the neighborhoods themselves.
“City planners used Tucson’s history, kind of, as a weapon to move undesirable populations where they want them to be to open up housing or open up opportunities for development,” Adams said.
When Tucson established its laws against minorities owning property around the beginning of Arizona statehood, Tucson Unified School District had already been in existence since 1867, according to the TUSD website, and their district boundary lines were already drawn around the majority of the city of Tucson.
Later, other school districts were created and laid around TUSD, with some ending up in the richer areas of town and some where the minority majority were living. These school district boundaries are still in place today and have remained constant in the same ways the separation of races among different neighborhoods have.
The method for determining school funding was created in 1982 and has not been revised since, according to AZ Central. Public schools receive funding based on their local property taxes, how many children they have in attendance, if there are children at the school with disabilities or if there are English-language learners at the school. In the state of Arizona, schools also receive funding for desegregation programs.
Desegregation programs are an effort by the state of Arizona and the city of Tucson to make their schools more culturally diverse. This program is aimed at providing a way for children in school districts with less funding to be able to go to schools that have more resources and to get the education that every child deserves.
According to AZ Central, this program was originally created for schools that had been treating minority students unfairly and the additional funding was meant to go to schools to counter this issue. It applies to 18 school districts throughout Arizona by allowing $211 million in additional funding for these select schools.
The reasoning behind the need for this program is rooted in the original, more racist, beginning of the city and its layout. Following the end of segregation, so much of the Tucson population had gotten used to being separated from the minorities that were perceived as lesser.
“If you look at instances in the deep south, if you look at instances on the east coast, it’s never white students moving to black schools. It’s always the other way around. It’s this assumption that black schools are inherently inferior,” Adams said. “It’s a privilege for black students to get to come to white schools; that’s kind of the reoccuring narrative.”
This narrative that Adams speaks of echoes into the creations of schools that were placed and built with the purpose of catering to the richer, whiter parts of Tucson. Suddenly, schools were made to still maintain the possibility for white students to be able to avoid attending schools with African American, Hispanic or Native American students. An example of this in Tucson is with University High School, according to Adams.
“University High School is problematic in the story of school segregation. Because the schools were integrating, white families got really concerned, so what they did is they created UHS as a way to separate the cream of the crop white students from everyone else and then they plopped it in the middle of Tucson High which creates huge racial tension because Tucson High is majority minority,” Adams said.
Nowadays, this trend in schools with races being relatively divided into different schools still exists and this is what efforts of desegregation are trying to reverse. The funding is meant to make each school be quality for any student who may go there, but Adams doesn’t believe this is doing enough.
According to Adams, the desegregation efforts are mostly for looks and may just be school districts making the slightest attempt at resolving the issue. “It allows them to kind of wash their hands of the situation and [say], ‘We’re doing what we can,’” Adams said.
From 2018: Shannon Fojtik is a reporter for Arizona Sonora News, a service from the School of Journalism with the University of Arizona.
