A City Within a City — Was Your Family Here?

A City Within a City — Was Your Family Here?

Juneteenth Series 2026 — Part 1

By Rod Grimes — Arizona Informant

Over the years, throughout researching Arizona Black Life stories, I was totally floored — and literally rocked out of my shoes — when I found the Directory of the Colored Population of Phoenix, Arizona, 1915-1916, in the Arizona State Archives.

Here was a singular document that said so much about our existence in Phoenix in 1915. No, we were not all cotton pickers — yet, cotton was King, and I submit that most of what happened in Arizona during this time was driven by cotton – in my opinion. We had a small, burgeoning but viable community. Yes, a community with a majority of agricultural and service workers, and yes, maids, chauffeurs, and laborers — but also a few shop owners, cafe owners, barber shops, and churches. All of it captured in a single document, with sponsorship by the biggest local bank in Arizona.

I was most certainly not put off by the word “Colored” in the title of the document. In my 79 years, my people and I have been called a lot worse. But the gratification of recognizing the sophistication that went into developing this directory far outweighs any historic projection of contemporary criticism.

They wrote our names down then, and they come back to life now – and that is what matters.

The Directory of the Colored Population of Phoenix, Arizona, 1915-1916 is one of the rarest documents in Arizona’s historical record – in my opinion. Hundreds of Black families are listed alphabetically with their home addresses. A section devoted to Black-owned businesses. A directory of fraternal lodges and women’s clubs. Photographs of two churches and a school.

Here is one of the items that stopped me when I first opened it.

Look at the cover. Right at the top, above the title, is the name of a major institution that sponsored it. Not a Black church. Not a fraternal lodge. The sponsor of this directory was the National Bank of Arizona, the largest bank in the state at that time. A white-owned institution, to be sure, put its name on a directory of Black residents in 1915.

That tells you something. It tells you that our small Black Phoenix community had a degree of economic weight. It had presence. It had enough standing that the largest bank in Arizona thought it was worth supporting with advertising.

One more thing about this document deserves mentioning before we go any further. The introduction to the directory was written and signed by a person identified only as A. DeBeano. It is a remarkable piece of writing — thoughtful, proud, and eloquent about the progress of Black Americans from slavery to education. But in all my research, I have been unable to find out anything more about A. DeBeano. Man or woman, Phoenix resident or visiting writer, real name or pseudonym — I simply do not know. If any of our readers has information about the editor of the 1915, Phoenix Colored Directory, I am asking you to please reach out. A. DeBeano wrote something worth preserving. The least we can do is find out who they were.

Inside those pages are family names that deserve to be said out loud. Arnold. Barnes. Brown. Burgess. Caldwell. Carter. Davis. Fields. Gardner. Harris. Johnson. Jones. King. Lewis. Roberts. Smith. Taylor. Williams. Wilson. Young. These are not statistics. Today, these are somebody’s grandparents, or Great-Grandparents. These are the people who built the foundation, the bridge that every future Black family in Phoenix — including mine — eventually walked across.

These families lived throughout the Phoenix area — on Jefferson and Madison on the east side, yes, but also south of the tracks, and into the County. Along the avenues on the west side, on Montezuma, on Grant, the directory made no distinction between city and county residents. The Black community certainly did not. You could drive one block and cross the city line — but you were still a neighbor, still a member of the same church, still a face at the same lodge meeting. The directory captured that reality. It was a portrait of a community, not a map of a municipal boundary.

They ran businesses, too. C.A. Hardy operated a barber shop at 33 South Second Street. H.W. Williamson ran The Palm Cafe at 117 South Second, serving barbecued food for twenty cents a meal. Mrs. L. Wilson was the proprietress of the Arizona Cleaning Works at 235 East Washington — her name was on the door.

And that community organized itself. The Masonic Lodge No. 412 listed William P. Crump as Worshipful Master. The Arizona Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs had officers and a membership. The Colored Advancement League of Phoenix had S.F. Bayless as its president. These were not informal gatherings. These were Black institutions — structured, named, and purposeful — in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1915.

Six years before my great-grandfather, Isaac Corbin Island Sr., brought his family here. Six years before my dad, Ben Grimes Sr., my uncle, Otha Grimes Sr., arrived. Six years before my great-uncle Joe Island arrived as a ten-year-old boy and eventually became one of the last students to attend Douglas School, on 5th and Madison, a burgeoning Black community foundation was already here — waiting for them.

Over the next several weeks, the Arizona Informant will publish excerpts from this directory — names, businesses, and organizations. And by the time our Juneteenth issue is published, we will have published the complete Phoenix Colored Directory 1915-1916 — in its entirety, so that every name in those pages is back in print where it belongs. So be sure to save each issue – starting today.

Was your family here?

Look through your family history. Ask your parents and grandparents if your family was in Phoenix before 1920 — if your grandparents or Great-Grandparents ever mentioned Eastlake School or Douglas School — there is a chance your family’s name may be in this directory.

Send your family connections to Rod Grimes at rlgrime@gmail.com. Tell us your name, your family name, and what you know about your Arizona roots. And if you know anything at all about A. DeBeano — or about S.F. Bayless, President of the Colored Advancement League of Phoenix in 1915 — please include that too. These are names that deserve to be found.

Yes, they called us Colored then — but over time we realized that the color was Black, and that Black is Beautiful — and we are still here.

Walk this journey with me.

Rod Grimes is a contributing journalist to the Arizona Informant and the producer of Arizona Black Life — Historical Archives, Stories & Films. His future video archives can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@arizonablacklife.