(upbeat music) - Coming up next on this special Martin Luther King Jr. Day edition of "Arizona Horizon," a new book focuses on social justice in action.

Also tonight, an ASU professor is honored with the MLK Junior Faculty Servant Leadership Award, and we'll hear about the ASU library's expanding collection of Black history in Arizona.

Those stories and more next on this special edition of "Arizona Horizon."

- [Announcer] "Arizona Horizon" is made possible by contributions from the Friends of Arizona PBS, members of your public television station.

- Good evening, and welcome to this special Martin Luther King Jr. Day edition of "Arizona Horizon."

I'm Ted Simons.

A new book edited by ASU Professor Neal Lester presents a collection of essays and reflections regarding practical approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The book is titled "Social Justice in Action: Models for Campus and Community."

We recently spoke to Neal Lester about the book.

Let's get going here.

It's good to see you again, by the way.

- Thank you.

- Define social justice.

- See, I knew you were gonna ask me that, and that's exactly what we try not to do in the course of putting this book together with 30 other people, is we sort of show social justice rather than trying to define it.

Once we try to define it, then it tends to sort of get murky and muddy.

What we do try to define, though, or to point out is what injustice is, and that is much easier to identify than trying to figure out some uniform definition of justice.

- [Ted] What is social?

- Well, social is people.

And so if we ask this question, "Are we losing our humanity?"

and then we start looking at things like respect, integrity, kindness, empathy, self-reflection, forgiveness, then we start saying, "Who is being denied that?

And are we denying ourselves that when we engage with other people?"

- Okay, in this collection of essays, who is, as far as the essays are concerned and the writers and folk, who are they saying is being denied what you just talked about?

- Well, it's not about who's being denied.

It's about the extent to which we all on some level may be experiencing, whether it is food insecurity, whether it's environmental justice, whether it's menstrual equity, whether it's race, racial justice, economic justice.

It's who's being denied humanity.

So the idea is not to look at a group and point fingers, but to say, "How are we trying to address an inequity that we are witnessing?"

So there's no question about what is injust now or unjust, and what injustice is, it's how are we practicing that?

- And you want a practical approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

- Oh, those bad words, yes.

- What does that mean?

- (laughs) Well, it's really not the boogie person that people have made it out to be.

It really is about humanity, which is what I try to look at through these lens of what we call Humanity 101.

It's are we respecting people with whom we disagree?

Are we extending compassion and kindness even if we disagree about these things?

So to what extent are we practicing this notion that I can respect you even though we disagree, and that's a real tall order, and not many are practicing that.

So I'm hoping that this will be a toolbox to give people some strategies.

- The impact of things like the pandemic.

- Yes.

- Of things like George Floyd.

- Yes.

- The impact of those things- - Yes.

- on what's being written in that book and what you collected.

- Yes, well, this started in 2017, and I thought I was just writing about Charlottesville and the travesty and the tragedy that was there.

And it came from being one of those people on the expert Rolodex for many people saying, "How do we fix racism?

How do we solve this?

How do we fix that?

Sexism, misogyny, how do we?"

And I don't have an answer for that.

I didn't create it, so therefore I don't have a magic pill for it or a potion for it.

And when I'd finish my talks and presentations, people would say, "Well, tell me what to do."

And then George Floyd happened and the pandemic happened, and it was a chance to sort of reflect even more on health inequities, injustices.

Many of us saw George Floyd die right before our eyes, and we knew something was wrong with that, no matter what we called it.

People started asking, "What can I do?

What can I do?"

And my first question or response was, "Well, what are you doing?"

And there was a pause, and people'd say, "Well, tell me what to do, 'cause I don't know what it's like to be Black."

And I say, "Well, fortunately if we look at empathy in a way that I'm suggesting we look, you don't have to be.

You just have to be with.

So you don't have to be me in order to be an ally.

So let me give you a toolbox of strategies."

But I thought, "Well, I can't tell everybody that.

So why not create a volume where lots of people have perspectives on it in different formats?"

So they're not all essays.

Some are poets, poetry, some are skits, some are essays, some are interviews.

- And people from performing arts, from, I think there's a biologist in here.

- [Neal] There's an evolutionary biologist.

- Yes!

- Just talking social justice.

Yes.

- Architecture is involved here as well.

- There's an a architect, yes.

- All right.

- Dancers.

- Yeah, you- - Actors, yes.

- Yes, and people reflecting, kind of interspersed within the longer essays.

- Reflecting and analyzing.

So it's not just a journal.

It's not just a personal kind of diary.

It really is about how do you analyze, how do you understand and what are people doing?

It's one thing to think about it.

The other thing is to see it in action.

That's the title.

- Okay, you mentioned the title.

I talked about how practical approaches to diversity, equity, inclusion, and you kind of mentioned, "Yes, those bad words," whatever.

We know what's going on.

- Well, it's not bad for me.

It's bad for some folks.

- I know.

I know.

But you were responding to the current climate, and let's talk about the current climate, because we just had an election where DEI was a pejorative, and the person and the groups using it as a pejorative, they won an election.

What's going on here?

- Well, that's interesting because I never thought that my book would take this long to sort of be birthed.

And it's interesting that the lessons in the book are still relevant now as they were when I started this seven years ago.

That's not a good thing.

I think the good thing is that it's still helpful and it's still relevant and it's still timeless.

People are people no matter what our circumstances, and I think people are looking for ways to be better and to do better.

And I have to believe in the faith of humanity.

As James Baldwin says, "I can't be a pessimist because I believe that we can be better and do better."

And that's really what the volume is about, is how are people doing better, and how do people feel like they're exerting some control over our own lives?

- And that's what you want folks to take from the book.

- Well, that's one of the things, but I can't project what people will take from it.

I just hope they pick it up and read it.

- Right.

- And they'll identify with something in there.

So there's a buffet of options and opportunities.

- So when I ask, "Who is the book written for?"

you say- - The book is written for all of us.

- Okay, is- - It is for you.

- [Ted] But is it an academic book- - Absolutely not.

- that's gonna be over my head and I can't understand - Absolutely not.

- what the heck you're talking about?

- That is so not what I do.

In fact, I'm not part of that little group of people who only write for two people.

In fact, that's why I ask K through 12 educators.

That's why I'd ask an actor to do it.

That's why I'd ask a dancer to do it, why I'd ask, you know, retirees to do it.

I've asked an HBCU president to write.

I've got museum directors.

I've got librarians in there.

And that was also one of the challenges for my publisher because they wanted their traditional scholars.

And about only half of the people in the volume are actually, quote, unquote, traditional scholars, 'cause I want this to be about everybody.

- Yeah, accessibility.

- So this is for everybody.

- Yeah.

- That's a hard book to write.

- Neal Lester, "Social Justice in Action."

- Yes.

- Always a pleasure having you on the show.

- Thank you so much for your interest.

- Good to see you again.

- Yes.

(lighthearted music) (lighthearted music continues) (flute trilling) (calm music) (singer vocalizing) (calm music continues) (singer vocalizing) - ASU professor Jeffery Wilson is the university's 2024 MLK Junior Faculty Servant Leadership honoree.

Wilson is a professor of statistics and biostatistics and has been an ASU faculty member since 1985.

We recently welcomed Jeffery Wilson to "Arizona Horizon."

Thanks for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- When this, and it's been a while since you got the award, it was earlier in the year, when you first heard you got this award, what went through your mind?

- What goes through my mind with this whole, that I'm not deserving of this.

I wonder what the committee was thinking.

- [Ted] (laughs) But you had to be proud.

It had to be great.

- Well, because I hold it in such great level that I didn't, I was impressed, I was really thrilled, but still think I'm not deserving of this.

- But you- - I said it in my speech.

- Yeah, but you were deserving.

Why do you think you won?

- Well, I hate to think that I won.

I feel that there are other people out there doing a lot of things, but maybe it's the culmination of work that I've done since I've been here at the ASU and more so in the recent times.

I've been take care of the president's LIFT Initiative.

I have, in my college, I've done the same thing in my college.

But these are things I was doing before I had a title, but I continue to do those things, helping others.

- Yes, helping others since 1985.

What got you here to ASU?

- ASU, it's interesting.

ASU was the only university that was willing to give for two of us.

So they had, I had other schools, but they only have given one position for me.

But ASU was willing to give two positions, one for me and one for my wife.

- Ah, and there you go.

And the rest is history, literally history.

You've been here all this time.

Did you always want to be a teacher?

Did you always want to be an instructor?

- I always wanted to be a professor.

My mother, she taught as a teacher.

She was a person who brought the kids in the village together, and I was always helping her.

And I moved with that same attitude throughout my undergraduate, my graduate, and after.

I just love teaching.

- [Ted] Yes, village, where?

- In Trinidad and Tobago.

- Wow, all right.

Do you ever get back?

- I got back last year because I was doing, for the university there that I went to school at, I was doing some workshops, so I did four workshops in about two days.

- That must've been kind of nice to go back and see the old town, huh?

- It was, it was, - Yeah.

- It was.

- But this is your home now, isn't it?

- [Jeffery] This is my home, yes.

- Okay, your focus is, what, biomedical, statistics.

You got law, you got business management.

What would, what's the focus?

What do you think is most important to you?

- Well, first, the way statistics works, you have theoretical side, and you have the practical side.

The theoretical side is where we publish in journals and bring us to a level where people say, "Yeah, the department has a high ranking."

But then the applied side, where I'm working with Alzheimer's and taking the data from Alzheimer's and helping investigators and researchers understand how the data works so that they could go out and produce better results for patients.

- Yeah, and I would think data analysis works across a lot of different avenues, huh?

- Yeah, we say we play in everybody's backyard.

Yeah, there you go.

- That's what we say.

- There you go.

You won an award for being a servant leader.

What makes a good servant leader?

- Well, again, I know what the box says.

I don't know what I do.

I know what I do with a passion, but I don't know what people measure.

In this process, we were looking at inclusive excellence, and the way I measure inclusive excellence is we all are from different groups.

We all have a different ladder.

Some of us, the ladder is steeper than some of us.

As a servant leader, I believe my job is to help people climb that ladder.

Some people need more help, and some people need less help.

And as that servant leader with that ladder, over the years, have some of your students come back to say thank you and shown their appreciation for you holding that ladder?

- Yes, many, many of my students.

I also did this on the side as a volunteer.

I also did coach soccer here in The Valley for 26 1/2 years.

- Wow, very good.

- And all volunteer, and all of them come back, and not just at the university, but other places they come back and say, and that makes me feel good.

- Oh, I'm sure.

It must be very rewarding.

And congratulations again on the honor.

My last question to you is, do you have a message, the most important message that you would give a student, what would it be?

- I would tell a student, be consistent in what you do, and work, just work 5% harder.

Don't work 100% harder.

In this country, if we just have 5% harder, you would believe that what results you get.

But be consistent because the success in university is you being consistent.

You want to party tonight?

You have to get up in the morning, have to be consistent, and so be consistent.

- Great advice, Dr. Jeffery Wilson.

Again, congratulations on the award, and thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

(mellow western music) (truck horn honking) (lighthearted music) (bright music) - [Ted] The Colorado River has carved over 600 miles of canyons in southern Utah and northern Arizona.

As sublime as these chasms are, to travelers, they pose a seemingly insurmountable problem.

Just how do you get to the other side?

(calm music) A highway marker on US 89A commemorates a successful effort that for nearly 60 years did just that, Lees Ferry.

Mormon pioneer John D. Lee came here in 1871.

He established a ferry service across the Colorado River at the only natural point for 600 miles.

Lee, seen here seated on his coffin, was executed in 1877 for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, when 120 immigrants heading to California were murdered in Utah.

The ferry operated for 52 more years, transporting thousands of hikers, horses, wagons, and even small automobiles across the river.

Only the railroad and finally in 1929 the Navajo Bridge made Lees Ferry obsolete.

Today, the original Navajo Bridge is reserved for pedestrians, while the new Navajo Bridge, built beside it in 1995, caters to cars and trucks, While the ferry itself is long gone, the name remains.

Lees Ferry is now the terminus for thousands of awestruck sightseers rafting on the mighty Colorado River.

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But our garden can't keep growing without your support.

Visit our website to see all the ways you can help our garden grow.

Plant a seed with Arizona PBS today.

(calm music) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) - ASU's library houses a repository of collections dedicated to sharing the lived experiences of Black Arizonans across the state.

It's an expanding collection that looks to continue that expansion with stories and photos that chronicle the lives of those who've contributed to Arizona's history.

Jessica Salow is the assistant archivist of the library's Black Collections.

Thanks for joining us.

- Yes, thank you for having me.

- All right, the Black Collections at ASU library, gimme a better definition.

- Yeah, so it is definitely a collection that's dedicated to community-driven archival practices, and so we are really dedicated to ensuring that all community, and that includes inside ASU and outside ASU that surround our campuses, has a collection that's dedicated to their stories, their memory, their history here in Arizona.

- And this was originally kind of focused on ASU, was it not?

- It was, but also at the same time we really recognize that when we're talking about archival collections, it really needs to involve our external community outside of ASU as well.

And that's what our Community Driven Archives Initiative is really about is external communities.

- [Ted] Was there a spark that got all this started?

- Yeah, so there was an initiative in 2020 that Dr. Crow put out regarding initiatives that were already going on within Arizona State University regarding Black faculty, students, and staff, and that was after the unfortunate events of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.

And at that time, Community-Driven Archives was really interested in expanding, being sustainable, and so we applied for the Listen, Invest, Facilitate, Teach Initiative within ASU, and that is how we received our funding, and that's how Black Collections was started was because of the LIFT Initiative, we call it.

- Okay, that's gotta be exciting.

You're starting from the ground up here, I mean.

- Yeah, it can be really exciting but also a little overwhelming when you're talking about a collection that should've been started a number of years ago, but also at the same time, we really are at a point where we can really take things in any direction that we want and have the flexibility to be, you know, kind of anywhere, everywhere, honestly, where that's concerned.

- Well, let's look at some of the photos here.

The first one is of a gentleman by the name of Benton James.

Who was Benton James?

- [Jessica] Yeah, so Benton James was our first Black male graduate of Arizona State University in 1924.

We're actually celebrating his hundredth graduate, hundred-year graduation this year.

And so Benton was, again, the first Black male graduate from the Teachers College.

And we have Benton's photo.

We have the program that he was in, but outside of that, we really don't have much- - Oh, wow.

- of Benton's history, especially his history at Arizona State University.

And so this year we put out a call asking folks that if they had any information about Benton or any information about early Black graduates that we would love to hear from folks about their experiences and the folks who came through ASU's doors.

- Very good, also, we have a photo of the Dunbar Social and Literary Club.

What's this all about?

- Yeah, that was a really interesting find within the yearbook.

So the Dunbar Club was started in 1936, and it was a club that was really promoting friendship and other connections throughout the university.

And so this was the only Black club in 1936, and it went all the way up until the 1950s, that really had dedicated all Black members, and they really were promoting, again, friendship, kind of unity and the understanding of being Black at Arizona State University.

- [Ted] That's a great group photo, yeah, that's- - Yeah, this is from the 1940 yearbook, so.

- Wow, wow.

- Yeah, yeah.

- All right, Lincoln Ragsdale, I think a lot of old-time Arizonans and Phoenicians will remember that name.

- Absolutely.

- He was a very big player here in the community and a big player there at Black Collections.

- Yeah, absolutely, we're really, really excited to be able to have the Ragsdale Family Papers collection at Arizona State University.

Lincoln Ragsdale, Jr. was gracious enough to donate that collection to Black Collections, and I'm currently processing through it right now, so it will be available in 2025.

But it really documents so much of the family's history, not only their personal family history, but their business history, their civil rights history, so much history of that family.

And if you know Phoenix history, you know the Ragsdale family history.

- Indeed, you mentioned business, The Valley code, this dedication, you even had a photo of that, too.

- Yeah, that was a really interesting find, that particular photo, because it really shows the pride that the Ragsdales had in their business, and then being able to create a whole new building that housed so many of their businesses.

- Yes, wow.

- This dedication photo is really, really something.

- Now, also from the Ragsdale collection, though, we see a protest at the Capitol, and we see a protest march, both of these photos from the Ragsdale collection.

Talk to us about them.

- Yeah, so these particular photos, you know, obviously the Ragsdales were very active in the civil rights.

They were one of the families that did bring Martin Luther King Jr. to The Valley in 1964 in order for him to speak at Goodwin Stadium.

And so a lot of times they would be in these particular, you know, protests, marches, and protest things.

And there was a lot of really great photos in the collection of these particular activities, not only of the family, but of the community at that time and what kind of they went through at these particular protest rallies in different situations.

- And these are the kinds of things, obviously from the Ragsdale family, and that's a prominent family here in The Valley, but you're looking for things just from regular folks, aren't you?

- Absolutely, what I tell folks is that Black Collections is for everybody.

It's not just for people who are prominent, like the Ragsdale family or politicians or people within ASU.

It's literally community.

So anybody who is a part of the Black or African American community here in Arizona, Black Collections is there to assist with the understanding of how to preserve your memory and how to do storytelling, if that's what you choose to do with your family and community memory and history.

- That's interesting.

You say, "to assist you to archive your own."

So basically, if you got a big collection of photos, you don't know what to do with these things, come in, you'll help.

- Absolutely, I would love to help.

But if you don't wanna donate, we also have the ability to give you free archival supplies or teach you how to do these particular things that we as professionally trained archivists know how to do and take that into your own family or community archive and do that particular work yourself if you don't wanna have us as Arizona State University take on that work for you.

- And we should mention, this is statewide here.

This is not just The Valley.

- Absolutely, statewide, Arizona, statewide.

Even though sometimes Maricopa County does tend to kinda get the large kinda chunk of a lot of that, but this is a collection that is statewide, so throughout the entire state looking for information about Black and African-American communities throughout the state that would really highlight the history of Black people here in Arizona.

- Well, congratulations on the project, and best of luck on this.

Sounds like busy work, I tell ya.

- Very busy.

- Jessica Salow, again, ASU library's Black Collections.

Good to see you.

Thanks for joining us.

- Thank you.

- And that is it for now.

I'm Ted Simons.

Thank you so much for joining us.

You have a great evening.

(calm music)