CHANDLER, AZ — When it comes to dismantling segregation in our schools, there are several key moments many of us think of: The Little Rock Nine, Ruby Bridges, and Brown vs. Board of Education.
But years before any of that, there was a group of students here in the Valley whose names may not be in the history books, but their impact is undeniable.
More than 70 years later, ABC15 is speaking to one of those barrier breakers.
"Life is worth living," explains Willie Arbuckle. "I'm 90 years old, and I enjoy life."
Any conversation with Arbuckle is like a journey through our state's past.
"Mostly cotton," Arbuckle says. "There was a lot of cotton in Arizona."
At 90 years young, Arbuckle has seen history change before his eyes, but he's also made some history of his own. It all took place on the footsteps of Chandler High School. He may not have known it at the time, but Arbuckle was about to do something no one else in his community had ever done before.
Ciletti: "At the time, did you see yourself as a trailblazer?"
Arbuckle: "No. To me at the time, we were not doing anything special we were just going to high school."
But he was also breaking barriers.
Arbuckle and his younger sister, Joella, along with Robert and Artie Mae Turner, were the very first black students to ever attend Chandler High School. The four teenagers helped to end decades of segregation. Arbuckle was a junior at the time, and despite the history he was making, he tells me he felt invisible at the time.
"I remember being ignored," Arbuckle says. "I think it was as strange for them as it was for us...The four of us in a sea of white children. You didn't know we were there...I was just trying to exist. I was just trying to get through each day peacefully."
Arbuckle says eventually, the black students and white students grew to be friendlier with one another, describing them as "good acquaintances."
But Arbuckle still remembers leading very separate lives in a still very segregated Arizona.
"Once you left the campus, the white kids would go to their neighborhood. We'd go south to the southside, our neighborhood, and act like we didn't even know each other."
Although Arbuckle now realizes how harmful segregation was, he said growing up, it was just a way of life because it was all he had ever known.
"We'd go to a drug store, get an ice cream cone, or a soft drink and they would serve you and send you out the door. You couldn't eat it or drink it in there. You'd go to a restaurant and you'd go around the back door, they'd give you a hamburger out the back door. We were fine with that - because we didn't know anything else. That's the way life was."
It was a painful time in Arizona's history and America's history. It may have seemed routine for Arbuckle at the time, but more than 70 years later, he now appreciates and honors the barriers he helped break for the ones that would continue the march toward equality - and it all started with a few brave steps.
"It was earth-shaking when you look back at it...the fact that I, along with the other three, the four of us were actually involved in an event, the absolute beginning of a new era in the school system in Chandler - that is mind-boggling. I am so proud of that, really, really proud of it. And all I had to do was just show up in school."
Later that same school year, four more black students would come to Chandler High School. Arbuckle and Robert Turner would become the first black students to graduate from Chandler High School in 1951.
The history of segregation in Arizona schools
Chandler High School integrated in 1949, even though school segregation wasn't outlawed in Arizona until 1953. The following year, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown vs. Board of Education, would pave the way for schools across America to end segregation.
Why did Chandler High School end segregation sooner than the rest of the state?
We've spoken to a number of historians who all have different reasons why Chandler Unified may have ended segregation sooner than the rest of the state.
Arbuckle says his mother and several other parents had petitioned the school board a number of times and were not going to take no for an answer. According to Arbuckle, they also spoke to our state's governor at the time.
There was also tremendous growth happening in the East Valley at the time, partly because of Williams Air Force Base.
Also, Carver High School, a school dedicated to students of color in Phoenix, was beginning to get more crowded; the school reportedly told other districts they were no longer to accept students from outside the Phoenix city limits.
