The Arizona Sun newspaper in 1950


I was browsing the Library of Congress newspapers site, which I love to do, not really looking for anything in particular, and this front page of the Arizona Sun caught my eye. It's Friday, February 3rd, 1950, and there's an article about the new YMCA building that will be built in Phoenix, Arizona.

No, there's nothing earth-shattering about this issue, and there's no reason for you to try to look for something. It's just an ordinary day in Phoenix in 1950. Time-travel with me.

I have a special fascination for the buildings in Phoenix, so when I see a newspaper article that has information it catches my eye, but there's more here when you put it in historical perspective. This is a newspaper for the Black population of Arizona, which the header explains represents 60,000 of those people. Phoenix, like the rest of the United States, was segregated. This was a time when being Black could keep you from eating a restaurant, staying at a hotel, even using a drinking fountain. And so I read the article about the new YMCA building to see if there would be any mention, even in passing, that 60,000 Arizonans would not be able to use it when it opened.

But there's no mention of that. And to see it from the perspective of these 60,000 people is jarring for a man like me, who grew up after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

When the YMCA building opened, no Black person would have been allowed to use the facilities, to use the pool, anything. Black people would have been allowed to work there, but that was it. And tonight as I write this and think about it, I seem to hear the voices of children asking why they couldn't go in there, use the pool, and I wonder how the grownups explained it.

Here's a link to the page if you want to read it: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/az_campfiregoneout_ver03/data/sn84021917/00414216821/1950020301/0665.pdf

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more