Bordertown: Legal Discrimination in Tucson: A History

In 1865, Arizona’s Second Territorial Legislature prohibited marriages between white people and “Negroes, mulattoes, Indians and Mongolians,” declaring all such marriages illegal and void in the Arizona Territory. The punishment for violating the law were fines in the range of $100 to $10,000 (in 2025, the equivalent of $2,000 to $200,000) and a prison term of anywhere between three months to ten years, although the fines and imprisonment were at the discretion of local judges and magistrates..

In 1887, the law was revised to include “descendants.”

All marriages of persons of Caucasian blood or their descendants with Africans or Mongolians and their descendants shall be null and void. (Revised Statues of Arizona, 1887. 2091. (Sec. 6),  pg 373).

Since the law stipulated that whites (or the descendants of whites) could not marry Black or Mongolians (or the descendants of Blacks or Mongolians) a person of mixed racial ancestry could only enter a marriage in which both parties had no white ancestry whatsoever—a legal and definitional impossibility. For example, a person who was 15/16 white and 1/16 black could not marry anyone who had any trace of white, black, Indian or Mongolian ancestry…Mexicans, in particular, as a mostly mestizo population, could not legally marry each other unless both were one hundred percent white or one hundred percent Indian…Similarly, any person of African ancestry with even a trace of white ancestry could not marry anyone who was white, black, or any of the combination of the two. Therefore, all mestizos and mulattoes who married anyone between 1887 and 1942 effectively broke the law. (Acosta, Salvador. Crossing Borders Erasing Boundaries: Interethnic Marriages in Tucson, 1854-1930). (1).

Because Hispanics were classified (in the Federal census, for example) as “white,” they could legally marry non-white people. However, Hispanics could also be classified as “mixed race” (mestizos, mulattos and/or Indians) which meant they were de facto included in Arizona’s race-based exclusion laws. although Arizona did recognize interracial marriages preformed in jurisdictions like New Mexico where the laws were less stringent.

In 1942, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that people of mixed race (excluding Hispanics) or “descended” from mixed-race people could not legally marry anyone, regardless of race. (State vs. Pass, 59 Ariz. 16, 121p. 2d 882 1942).

Joe R. Kirby, born in Tucson 1883, was the son of William T. Kirby (white, from Kentucky) and Gertrude Romero, born in Sonora, Mexico.

Mary Ellen Pascall was born in 1877 near Mill Creek, Bourbon County, Kansas. Her parents, Edwin Pascall and Rebecca (Johnson) were black. In 1893, in Arizona, probably in Yavapai County, Mary Ellen married Earl Conners, an African-American brick mason. They had two children, both of whom died in childhood. By 1910 she was a widow. (2).

In 1914, in Tucson, Mary Ellen (Pascall) Conners married Joe Kirby.

In the 1921 Tucson City Directory, “Mary E. Kirby” lives in the Dunbar Spring neighborhood, at 712 N. 11th Street. The (c) next to her name indicates that she is “colored.”

Salvador Acosta listed 52 “…interethnic unions involving blacks, Chinese, Mexicans, and descendants of these combinations.” Between 1854 and 1930, the Kirby’s marriage is the only one known in which one partner was black and the other, white. Because it had taken place in Arizona, it was illegal. In the 1920 census, the Kirby’s daughter, Olga-Josephine, born in 1918, was listed as “mulatto.” Between 1887 and the repeal of Arizona’s anti-miscegenation laws in 1962, Olga would have, according to a strict interpretation of the laws, been prevented her from marrying anyone in Arizona.

Elderly Tucsonans who remembered when the richest, most influential families in 19th-century Tucson were bi-racial, and the town itself racially and culturally diverse, had lived long to see segregation become a way of life. The rules were informal, unwritten—but understood by everyone.

“It was definitely segregated,” Willie Fears said to Tom Danehy of the Tucson Weekly as she prepared for the 1999 Dunbar School reunion. “You knew early on where you could go and couldn’t go. Some of the stores and all of the restaurants—you knew you weren’t welcome. You couldn’t go in and you knew better than to try and get a job there…And the movie theaters—the Fox, Rialto and the Lyric—they were segregated. We had to sit upstairs in the balcony and we had different restrictions on us than the white kids.” (Willie Fears, Tucson Weekly). (3).

Certain places you couldn’t eat. El Charro Restaurant [434 N. 4th Avenue] no signs, you had to understand. They told you when you went in; you could take it out. But it was just, you know, we couldn’t eat in there…My dad never talked about it, and my mom never talked about it. It was just something people accept. You know? It’s a way of life, and that’s what you do.” (Castromo “Cass” Preston). (4).

“When we talked to people about the irrigation ditch in the Barrio Anita a lot of folks remembered swimming in it,” Alissa Gonzales writes in the 1998 booklet, A Path to the River. “There was a [public] pool near the neighborhood in Oury Park, but in those days no blacks or browns or yellows or anyone else was allowed to swim in the public pools with white people. But everyone could swim in the [Barrio Anita] irrigation ditch. So we started calling it the ‘integration ditch.’ (Barnes, pg. 57-58). (5)

[Irene Felix] had gone to elementary school [in the 1940s] at a time when children were “paddled or had their mouths washed out with soap for speaking Spanish.” She remembers, too, the dreaded ‘1C Program,’ where proficiency in English as a second language determined first-grade placement. (Barnes, pg. 135).

Between 1913 and 1951, elementary schools (kindergarten through 9th grade) were segregated. No matter where they lived in Tucson, black students attended the Paul Laurence Dunbar elementary school in the Dunbar Spring neighborhood. Because Tucson could not afford to build and maintain a separate high school for black students, everyone attended Tucson High. Sports teams and classrooms were integrated, although black and white students still had separate homerooms and social clubs.

In 1948, the police department hired WWII veteran Lonnie Reed, Tucson’s first African-American police officer. (6).

In 1951, Tucson schools were officially integrated.

But the city was not.

Beginning in the early 1900s, real estate developers, homeowner’s associations, local politicians and the Federal government implemented “Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions” preventing African-Americans, Asians, Jews and other groups from living in certain neighborhoods.

In further consideration of the conditions and covenants herein, party of the second part agrees and binds himself, his heirs, executors, administrators and assignees, that the premises above described shall never be sold to a person or persons of negro descent. (1916 “Bargain and Sale Deed” for the Bray-Valenzuela house at 203 N. Grande Avenue. National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet. United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service. 1992).

Stanley Feldman was born in New York City in 1933. His father, Meyer, and mother, Esther, had been born in Russia. In 1944, Mr. Feldman bought a house at 3450 Via Golondrina in the Colonia Solana Subdivision (bounded by Broadway, South Country Club, Randolph Way and East Camino Campestre).

One night, a group of neighbors came to the house and told Stanley’s parents that subdivision restrictions “…Prohibited the occupation of any property in the subdivision by anyone that is not of the Anglo-Saxon race and the Christian religion.”

My father had put up a mailbox with a little sign underneath saying Feldmans, the Jewish name. And [the neighbors] had come to tell us that they didn’t want to make any trouble, they weren’t going to force us to move…but the name had to come off the mailbox. My mother and father asked why, and they were told that the neighbors didn’t want the name there because it might lead other people to believe  it was OK for Jewish people to move in. And that would destroy or impair neighborhood values. So the name had to come off. (7).

In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that CCRs were “unenforceable.” But it was not until 1968, with the passage of the Federal Fair Housing Act, that they finally became illegal.

People who have purchased houses in Tucson built before 1960, and read the deed’s fine print, have sometimes discovered that, although restrictive CCRs are illegal, the terminology was never removed.

University of Arizona professor Dr. Jason Jurjevich, students and faculty members spent two years researching property documents, primarily maps and deeds at the Pima County Recorder’s Office; holding community events, panel discussions and interviewing people whose lives were impacted by housing restrictions, and creating software to identify racist language in housing deeds.

[The “Mapping Racist Covenants Project”] explores the geography of racial covenants across Tucson neighborhoods and subdivisions, focusing on those enacted between 1912-1968 [and creating] an interactive web-based map highlighting the geography of racist CCRs in Tucson. (Jason R. Jurjevich, Yoga Korgaonkar, Chris Kollen, Liz Wilshin, and Claire Holloway. 2023. Mapping Racist Covenants.mappingracistcovenants.org).

At one square mile, Catalina Foothills Estates was Tucson’s largest restricted subdivision. The boundaries of the earliest development, began in 1936, are uncertain, but extended from the corner of North Campbell and East River Road (at St. Phillip’s-in-the-Hills Episcopal Church, opened in 1936) east to Hacienda del Sol. Among the first named streets were Camino Escuela and Camino Miraval.

No part of said property shall be sold, conveyed, rented or leased in whole or in part to any person of African, Asiatic, Negro, Oriental, or Mongolian descent, or to any person not of the White or Caucasian race. No part of said property shall be used or occupied or permitted to be used or occupied in whole or in party any person of African, Asiatic, Negro, Oriental or Mongolian race or descent, or by any person not of the White or Caucasian race, except such persons as may be employed thereon as domestic servants by the owners or tenants of any lots in said property. (Declaration of Conditions and Restrictions Catalina Foothills Estates No. 2. 1947 The University of Arizona. University Libraries. UA Campus Repository).

Restricted neighborhoods included the Blenman-Annex Addition, bounded by Elm Street, Seneca, Treat Avenue and Country Club (Arizona Daily Star. 16 February 1941, Page 7); San Clemente, located between East Broadway, East Nimrod, South Columbus and South Alvernon (Arizona Daily Star,  2 November 1930, Page 27); and Schumacher’s Addition, between N. 6th Avenue, Lester Street, N. 4th Avenue and East Drachman Street, (Arizona Daily Star, 5 May 1938).

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Chapter Notes

(1). Acosta, Salvador. Crossing Borders Erasing Boundaries: Interethnic Marriages in Tucson, 1854-1930. A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of History in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate College, The University of Arizona. 2010. Pages 45-46).

(2). Mary Ellen (Pascall) Kirby’s grandfather, Caswell Pascall, was born circa 1820 in Williamson County, Tennessee. In June of 1863, in Columbus, Kentucky, he enlisted in the Tennessee Volunteers, 2nd Regiment, Heavy Artillery (African-American). On 21 February, 1879 near Fort Scott in Bourbon County, Kansas, Caswell, age 59, married a widow, Celia Haywood, age 50. He died in Bourbon County in 1894, and was probably buried in the Mayhew cemetery, which was primarily African-American. Established in 1885, it was in use until the mid 1930s. After 1961, the cemetery was bulldozed, plowed under for farmland, and the headstones thrown into the Marmaton River. (Loretta George, Interest in the Mayhew Cemetery has Revived. 4 February 2021, fort scott.biz/news).

(3). Willie Fears. Color Blind: Dunbar School Alums Gather to Remember the Bad Old Day of Segregation. Interview with Tom Danehy. Tucson Weekly, 2 December 1999.

(4). Castromo “Cass” Preston, born 1929. 2019 NPR radio interview about growing up in Tucson in the 1930s and 1940s. Host, Aengus Anderson. “Archive Tucson: AT Shorts: Jazz on MeyerAvenue-AZPM.” news-azpm.org..

(5). Dunbar: The Neighborhood, the School and the People, 1940-1965. Aloma J. Barnes. Wheatmark Press, 2015. Pg. 57-58. Bounded by Speedway, Stone Avenue, Sixth Street, Main Avenue and the Union Pacific Railroad, Dunbar Spring was Tucson’s first primarily African-American neighborhood.

(6). In 1959, Officer Reed was promoted to detective and chosen Officer of the Year. In 1960, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant.

(7). Excerpt from Stanley Feldman’s oral history and broadcast in the context of an Arizona Public Media Story about housing discrimination in Tucson. AT Shorts: Anti-Semetic (sic) Deed Restrictions. Aengus Anderson. 23 September, 2019.

The 1928 Declaration of Establishment of Conditions and Restrictions of Colonia Solana Subdivision, prohibiting people of “Black or Asiatic descent” or “Not of the white or Caucasian race” from living in the subdivision, did not mention Jews or non-Christians. (Colonia Solana Residential Historic District. National Register of Historic Places Registration form. United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service).