- This week on Arizona illustrated, to the world she was Eleanor Roosevelt, to one Arizonan, she was simply my grandmother.

- This woman had touched people in every corner of the earth.

- Dunbar school memories - Would be kids coming out of each one of these rooms - Pieces of time - Looking through the archive.

I felt a deep connection to my history and my roots - and traffic control, 80's style - Quarter to 4, we started putting them down then a quarter to 6 we start picking them up again.

(funky music) - Welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, the flat open areas in mosquito Basques surrounding the tech of Verde washy East of Tucson have a long history of ranches and riding centers and equine sports facilities.

A tradition that continues today in this beautiful area as always the Arizona public media crew.

And I continue to be cautious by wearing masks and keeping our distance due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Now on this episode of Arizona illustrated you'll hear memories and recollections from Arizona's past but first here's a COVID-19 update.

Arizona's new cases, new deaths, people being tested and the percentage of those testing positive continue to decline prompting an executive order by governor Ducey lifting local mask mandates.

However, Pima County, the city of Tucson and the university of Arizona announced their mask mandates will remain in place.

And while vaccinations continue to rise, demand for the shots in Pima County continues to outpace supply for information regarding vaccinations, visit azdhss.gov.

Eleanor Roosevelt is considered by many to be the most influential American woman of the 20th century.

As president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wife.

She was intimately involved in some of the most important events of American history.

The great depression, world war II, the civil rights movement, an activist for human rights and dignity from within the white house and beyond she was recognized and loved around the world.

But there were a lucky few who knew her like no other.

- I knew Eleanor Roosevelt as my grandmother.

I didn't know she was really famous.

I knew lots of people knew her but I assumed a lot of people knew older people because they'd been around longer.

And I had no idea that she was as famous as she was but she was just my grandmother.

- Nina Roosevelt Gibson spent much of her childhood with Eleanor Roosevelt who lived right next door.

- She was wonderful as a grandmother, she put us first, in Hyde park when dignitaries would come and visit, we would have a formal meal dinner, whatever.

After dinner, it didn't matter what the dignitary wanted to do and that this could be a King or queen of of another country.

It didn't matter what they wanted to talk about.

That was the time that if there were grandchildren present which often there were, she would get out a book.

She'd been reading to us and read a few chapters before we all went off to bed.

- Others Eleanor put first were women and minorities.

She championed for both through public policy.

And by her own example - I had one of the first black dolls and I loved it but friends would come over and they'd be terrified of that doll.

And I couldn't understand why it just never occurred to me growing up with my grandmother, things like that just didn't occur to you because there were people of all colors there and they were all welcomed.

- Eleanor came from a family of leaders challenged by trying times she, her husband and distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and her uncle president Teddy Roosevelt as one family touched more American lives than any family in history.

- Eleanor Roosevelt had been her husband's liberal conscience always urging him to do what she saw as the right thing.

During her last years, she served her country and her party in the same role.

Over the next decade she continued her work on behalf of civil rights championing integration of the armed forces, applauding the integration of the schools, publicizing instances of discrimination, supporting the freedom riders and ignoring the death threats that never stopped coming her way.

- Nina recalls that while Eleanor never showed it publicly these battles took their toll.

- My grandmother used to go into the bathroom and turn on the faucet and have a cry and then turn off the faucet, wipe her face and come out.

And she was going forward.

And she taught me to do the same thing when I was little - Nina grew up in one of the most famous families in America yet in some ways her childhood was similar to that of many children of the era especially at family meals with her uncles.

- That dinner time, we heard a lot of conversations and many of which went right over our heads.

My father at that time was the only Republican and the others were still Democrats.

So we had booming discussions between the brothers and my father at the dinner table, arguing back and forth.

And as children, we picked up quite a bit of what they were saying.

We didn't really understand it all, but we were never sort of pushed away from any kind of conversation.

We rarely talked about FDR in the past.

So when I was in college, I took a course on FDR and the new deal.

- As a delegate to the United nations and chairperson of the human rights commission.

Eleanor Roosevelt gave speeches throughout the world.

At times, Nina accompanied her grandmother on one especially enlightening trip to Iran.

They came upon a beggar outside a hut by the side of the road.

- We stopped as other visitors did.

And we got out of the car and we went over and we were talking to the man and we had interpreters and my grandmother had not been introduced but she said to him, we have brought you, We were going to have a picnic.

And so we have brought you some picnic foods.

Would you like them?

And the man suddenly tears came to his eyes and he said, Mrs. Roosevelt.

Now nobody had told him her name but he heard her voice and he was blind.

So he couldn't see her, but he knew that voice.

That was the moment I realized that this woman had touched people in every corner of the earth and touch them with love.

- Eleanor had even touched Tucson Arizona during two visits in the 1950s.

Her experience then would foreshadow Nina's own journey here decades later - Just before we came, I was packing things to move to Arizona.

I have a lot of letters from my grandmother over the years and I just haven't opened one up which I do that frequently just to kind of reminisce or whatever.

And it was a letter talking about staying at the Arizona Inn and going to the desert museum and how lovely it was and how much she really enjoyed Tucson.

So I've thought, Oh good.

I will enjoy Tucson as well.

- Eleanor Roosevelt passed away in 1962, shortly after celebrating her 78th birthday with a party for children only.

- The Dunbar school Northwest of downtown was Tucson's only segregated school for more than 30 years, desegregated in 1951 with a name change it closed for good in 1978.

Now, while segregation left painful wounds, many African-American children were able to persevere and thrive through the adversity.

Barbara Lewis was a Dunbar student for eight years.

Today she's busy seeing that the school's impact is remembered.

(jazzy music) - My name is Barbara Lewis and I attended Dunbar segregated school from 1942 through 1950.

I remember this room being my first grade room.

It's familiar and I can remember it.

And, but it's now used for storage at the moment.

My teacher was Ms. Carter.

I love that name.

And actually I remember she, now talk about a soft and loving teacher, she was.

I found a picture of me.

I think I must have been six or seven.

And I think it was when my mother had a beauty shop downtown and there was a studio called cabooses.

And I think he must've just said, come on in little one let me take a picture of ya.

Cause I've got an ice cream cone, I'm hiding here.

Look at that.

Those pants are all big.

That belt's all, and those shoes.

I never had friends until I started attending school.

We were just kinda like isolated.

And my folks didn't let us run around and make many friends.

So this was like my friends and my little family.

And I was so happy to be with them.

There was Ed Wynonna, me, Herman, Ed Sparks, Burke Preston.

Tina.

I could go on.

But yeah, I remember 'em all.

We were very happy children.

I don't think we realized that we got the only books we had was used books when other schools were through with them or or that we were really deprived.

I think if that's all you know, that's all you know, and this is, is the principal's office.

But my goodness, it's so much smaller than I remember.

It used to look so big to me because, well, I was little I guess.

I talked all the time.

I talked constantly.

I think I came here talking constantly and you know, okay Barbara Hollins go to the principal's office.

This is the electrical room now, it used to be, we didn't have a cafeteria as such, but Ms. Warrior would cook on burners.

We were especially happy on Thursdays because it was chili bean Thursday.

And we loved it.

We pay a nickel for our little lunches and find a place to eat them.

This arch is, I'd say it's kind of like our auditorium or our assembly hall because we didn't have one to begin with.

And we'd have all kinds of celebrities.

African-American ones that would come to town.

Parents that had a profession will come to talk and we'd line up from under this arch all the way down to the end of the hallway would be kids coming out of each one of these rooms.

We would have our Christmas parties for everybody here.

It really is nostalgic.

When I, when I stand here and look down or when I come this way and look up because this was our main space until we got an auditorium on the other side.

This was 1950, that's me.

And let's see, this is my best girlfriend, this, Oh I had two boyfriends.

We'd, I'd interchange them.

They were best friends , This is Ed Sparks and Burke Preston.

Yeah.

I'd alternate.

You don't want to hear that story.

This is, Oh, this is our teacher, Mr. Todd.

And he's 103 this year.

And he's still, as far as I know clear-headed he was a wonderful teacher, such a nice man.

And I can say that they did good because the majority of each one of those classes, the kids are professionals.

A lot of doctors, engineers, lawyers are from that Dunbar school, which is amazing to me.

I don't know.

You just felt, I felt warm and wanted.

This is a school, only school we could go to in those early grades.

And this is the only school that black teachers could teach was here.

We were all in this together.

The funny thing was, as soon as we got ninth grade, graduated ninth grade we went to integrated Tucson high.

If I had a magic wand.

I would have it completed soon.

I'd have enough money where we could finish our library, finish our museum, shore up some of the defects that have happened over the years with the earth moving.

And we'd have a lot of activities because we do have a lot of room.

I'd like for it to be many things but for the legacy to remain, I do not want a legacy of separatism, but but just let it be known what it, what it was.

But we want to be better than that.

I'll always love this building.

I mean, no matter what happens, but we're going to see to it that it stands another hundred years.

- Barbara Lewis is still on the Dunbar coalition board and reports that while the pandemic slowed their efforts renovation continues and her teacher, Mr. Todd, now 105 years old is still doing well.

Beginning in 1968, Tucson dealt with it's rush hour traffic by turning the center lane of several streets into a one-way lane, each weekday morning and again, in the afternoon these express lanes would essentially allow for more traffic where and when needed.

But it's how those lanes appeared and vanished each day.

That's the subject of this installment of, from the vault.

- I get up at five, be to work by six.

Then we leave the shop about twenty-five after, be out there get the cones already.

Then we start putting them out, quarter to seven we'd put them down, quarter to nine we start picking up.

We're usually off the road at nine or after or something easily.

- It's timing and rhythm.

The speed on how fast you swing your arm to accord and how fast you're going.

- And he's the best one we've got.

(uplifting music) This is about four and a half miles we gotta do.

And you kind of wonder the first time you do it whether you're going to get it done in 15 minutes we had the chair made so we can switch sides depending on whether we're picking up or putting down.

That way traffic's never behind us.

There's a lot of people around here that you know, enjoy this.

- Yeah.

There's a lot of people when we're putting out the cones, like mainly in the afternoon they'll say it's not four o'clock yet.

And they'll tell me it's not four o'clock I'm like, yeah but it takes 15 minutes to put these cones on the road.

You can't just start at four o'clock and have them down at four o'clock.

- It also says no left turns when cones in place, it doesn't specify what time.

- I can do it at 30 miles an hour.

- He can, 23 is my top, 30 picking up 23 top for putting down - A quarter to four, we start putting them down.

Then a quarter to six, we start picking them up for the day until the next day.

(upbeat music) - The Arizona state museums, photographic collection of Southwest American Indian culture dates back over 100 years, not long after the invention of photography but the images are far more than just a visual record.

They're a powerful window in time for the museum staff and for Arizona's indigenous people.

- I'm Jannelle Weakly and my position is curatorial specialist senior and carer of the photo collections at Arizona state museum.

That means just making sure that they're kept safe and accessible to the public.

Gladly, our collection covers the cultures of the Southwest.

So all the indigenous communities, there's 22 tribes in Arizona and we have photo documentation of all of the communities.

Also archeology that's been done in Arizona and the Southwest.

This is a set of eight millimeter films from 1936 to about 1942.

We also have videos, some of the films aren't in super great condition.

And the only thing that will arrest that and slow it down is to put them in a freezer.

So these are Oro tones and they're on glass to get the gold tone, either banana oil with gold pigment or gold leaf are used.

And it gives it a real three dimensional quality and very luminous quality.

Both of these images are by William Dinwiddie, who swung through here in the mid 1890s.

And this one's out at the tahona autumn community, probably near sunervere.

And we know the woman is named Joanna Victoriana which is really wonderful to have a photo that old and we know her name.

And this one is a group of Apache people probably near San Carlos.

I think this is our oldest print and it's a Dario graph.

The image is by Timothy O'Sullivan, it's from 1873.

Helga Tievus was the Arizona state museums photographer for 30 years.

These are some of the ones by Helga.

Now the tahona autumn people, her photographs probably make up easily a third of our collections and she documented pottery making, agriculture, you name it.

She would go to the communities and get permission to photograph.

So Rupert NGO made three pots and she documented every face of each of the pot, those three pots.

Her work touched so many lives and she, she created such beauty for every single person she photographed.

(whimsical music) I think we have a legacy of the colonial white people coming out here.

And I think we've over the years, been really good about working more closely with the tribes, instead of telling them we're better at listening to them, I'm sure we have a long way to go.

We have our Southwest native nations advisory board and it's a group of members from each of the tribal communities in Arizona.

Once a year, they come and we present about what exhibits and public programs we have coming up and we seek their advice.

- Gran was born in the thirties, so around this time, she was probably an infant.

- So I teach the history and culture of Yaki people, it's offered at the reservation.

We can offer it tuition free to our community members.

I think when they come in here and you're looking at these photographs, a lot of the just the general histories we talk about, start fitting in or that at least they can see how their families were part of that, that era that we just talked about.

Yes, some of these photographs might've been taken during a questionable time or should they been taking pictures in the first place.

We really do have to be careful, just gotta be critical of everything and find what you need.

I think that when, when our students are able to understand that and be able to use that for their own purpose, their own work, their own learning path, I think it's great.

- I didn't even know this existed until I took Annabel's class.

Looking through the archives.

I felt a deep connection to my history and my roots and it really was profound to know that I have a history and I have roots and I've, I come from a tribe.

It's a good feeling to know that.

- Thank you for joining us here on Arizona illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

See you next week.