Thanks to Joe Arpaio and the Legislature of Russell Pearce, Phoenix has gained a global reputation as the Birmingham, Alabama, of the new century. I wish I could tell you that things were better in the past, but alas the racist and exclusionary roots of my hometown are deep. Far from being seen as a leap forward, the appointment of David Cavazos as Phoenix's first Latino city manager will be confirmation in the eyes of the elites that, as one smugly told me, "Phoenix is the Hispanic Detroit."
Phoenix was settled largely by Southerners and ex-Confederates, and it kept that Southern sensibility well into the 1960s. The Chicagoans who started coming in the 1930s brought their own prejudices that for decades tore that city apart. Phoenix was heavily segregated, including in the schools. To be fair, it didn't usually extend to such apartheid as a "colored waiting room" at Union Station. But the race and class lines were drawn hard. Phoenix saw itself as an Anglo city, unlike old Tucson, with its proud Spanish and Mexican traditions.
The Salt River Valley, of course, had once been part of Mexico. Before Columbus, it was the site of the most advanced irrigation-based civilization north of Mesoamerica before being abandoned by the Hohokam. By the time white families such as mine began arriving in the 1890s, Hispanics and Pimas were living there, too. With large-scale cotton farming, African-Americans also migrated to Phoenix creating what became a relatively large black community. Many were recruited by the farm interests seeking cheap labor and promising a better place than the racist South. Chinese immigrants came from California. Phoenix was never Des Moines on the Salt River. By the turn of the 20th century, Phoenix was a multi-racial society.
