Phoenix Union High School District Schools didn’t have the chance to play in the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s 2021 winter sports postseason, which ends this weekend with championship games and matches, because of COVID-19’s impact in its communities.

Student athletes participating in soccer, wrestling and basketball missed out on their chance to compete for a title representing a district with a proud history of athletic achievement.

Part of that history has faded from memory now, but dates back to a time when schools segregated by race were common in Phoenix and across the country. It was during that time, nearly 70 years ago, that the all-Black Carver High School in Phoenix fielded a two-time state champion basketball team, including 1954, the final season the team played. 

Phoenix public high schools were integrated after the end of the 1953-54 school year and Carver was closed, its students dispersed to several other schools the following fall. Its campus, located near Grant and Seventh streets just south of downtown Phoenix, today houses the Carver Museum and Cultural Center.

The school’s history, along with the legacy of that Carver High basketball team, is preserved at the museum and in the memory of its last living team member, who remembers what life was like then and what it meant to have a championship basketball team at a time when Black residents were not given equal status — even in public schools.

For four consecutive years, from 1951-54, Carver played in the state basketball championship game for its division. It won the title twice, in ’52 and ’54,  according to AIA records.

Then, Carver closed. Its returning students were sent elsewhere as part of Phoenix school integration. Its legacy, and that of its great basketball team, left to record books, newspaper clippings and the memory of a handful of people who can still recall that dynasty, including T.C. Dean, who lived it.

Overcoming the odds

The first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice and civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall, who as an NAACP attorney was instrumental in the court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated schools, once said, “Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.”

The odds weren’t in Carver’s favor during the first half of the 20th century. The all-Black school was part of Phoenix’s segregated past, in which racism defined by boundaries and places where Black residents were — and were not — welcome. But faced with that history, Carver’s boys basketball team and its other athletic programs took things into their own hands.

The Carver Monarchs won a slew of former West Central division titles and Class B state championships in basketball, baseball, football, track and field, and even ROTC, from its inception in 1926 through 1954.

That includes its boys basketball team winning two of their four consecutive Class B state championship appearances in 1952 and 1954 (listed now as 3A titles on the AIA archive site).

Former  Monarchs basketball center and Grand Canyon University sports pioneer T.C. Dean of Phoenix was part of that team. 

“I said a long time ago that sports is going to help integration,” Dean, 84, told The Arizona Republic in a recent interview. 

Dean is the last surviving member of the 1954 Carver state champion basketball team.

Dean to this day believes Phoenix public high school administrators and the white community at large couldn’t handle Carver’s dominance in sports.

“You will not find that written, but the answer is yes, because we started winning everything,” Dean said with a laugh. “We started beating everybody in everything, and we were kind of their equal because they couldn’t beat us in nothing. We had winning streaks. We were expected to win. We were the best in everything, and we had to be the best, proud of who we were.”

The formation of Carver High School coincided with a rise of Black migrants to Phoenix in the early 20th century.

Carver’s origins began when African American student enrollment increased in Phoenix schools before and after World War I ended in 1918, causing pushback by the city’s white residents.

“Phoenix has its origins and they are not pretty, like a lot of places,” said Steve Jordan, who played for the NFL Minnesota Vikings. His father, Leon Jordan, was a longtime PUHSD educator who coached the Carver basketball team in the 1952-54 seasons, including the two title years. 

“It’s interesting when I talk to people now and some of them came from the Midwest, like Minnesota or Chicago,” said Jordan, whose son, Cameron, attended Chandler High and now plays for the New Orleans Saints.  “We have a lot of snowbirds that made the transition, when you talk about Phoenix — I call it ‘soft segregated’ — but people are just shocked, like ‘Phoenix? You gotta be kidding me.’ That would be correct.”

According to the City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Office, the Arizona Territorial Legislature enacted a law in 1895 that high schools could form in districts with a minimum of 2,000 residents.

Phoenix Union High School opened four years later. 

As more Black students began attending Phoenix Union, the city’s white residents grew resistant. White school administrators and legislators proposed two laws when Arizona achieved statehood in 1912, allowing segregated elementary schools and prohibiting interracial marriage. 

Phoenix established the Department for Colored Students in 1918, located in a rear room of the Phoenix Union campus Commercial building, according the historic preservation office. 

As Phoenix drew more Black residents from other parts of the country, steps were taken to establish an all-Black high school in an area around a warehouse district south of downtown Phoenix, near where many Black newcomers were settling, south and west of today’s downtown Phoenix. Many Black residents objected to the industrial location and potential health hazards, according to the Phoenix Preservation Office records.

In 1926, Phoenix Union Colored School opened at the site, 415 E. Grant Street, just west of Seventh Street and about a half-mile south of where Chase Field stands today. Its name was changed to George Washington Carver on June 7, 1943, in honor of the African-American scientist and educator of the same name, who died that year.  

As Phoenix grew, unofficial boundaries — known as ”redlining” — were established, outside of which Black residents knew they would not always be welcomed by white residents or businesses. 

READ MORE: Valley 101: Phoenix’s history of redlining

“Washington Street was basically a dividing line,” Dean said. “It was kind of like an unwritten rule. No one said you couldn’t, and nothing happened, but you stayed in your lane. You didn’t go over there, dating or visiting white girls. You might cut a lawn there or something, but there were no problems because you just didn’t do it.” 

‘It was us against the world’

The high school had four principals during its existence: Mrs. C.B. Caldwell, Millard T. Woods, Roy A. Lee, and W. A. Robinson. Robinson recruited teachers who held master’s degrees from throughout the country. 

“From my folks, they were really big on education, so that was kind of the big thing and I know a lot of his (Leon Jordan’s) students respected that because I had heard from people after the fact,” Steve Jordan said, recalling his father’s impact as a teacher, not just a coach.

The school boasted a multitude of esteemed graduates who would later have an impact on Phoenix, including several elected officials. 

While excelling in the classroom, many students excelled in athletics, and basketball was one of those sports.

The Monarchs won various track and field Class C state titles in 1941 and 1942 as well as a West Central District title in 1949, before moving up to Class B and winning again in 1951. The school’s football team, led by running back three-time All-State selection George Greathouse, later an Arizona State legend, won state titles from 1951 through 1953 and a division title.

And there was the basketball team.

Carver’s basketball team collected district titles from 1948 through 1950 before the string of championship games. 

They were coached by Joe Flipper, who led them to the 1951 state title game, in which they were beaten by the undefeated Miami Vandals (29-0). Leon Jordan replaced Flipper the following year.

Jordan was a teacher and coached basketball at Knoxville College in Tennessee before he continued his career at Carver. Jordan, who passed away in 1983 at age 60, moved with his wife, Kathleen, from Kansas City, Kansas to Phoenix in 1950.

Leon’s college fraternity brother in Alpha Phi Alpha and fellow coach Jack Atkins convinced Jordan to move to Phoenix, where there was an opening for the Carver boys basketball team.

Steve Jordan recalled, “(Carver) needed a head basketball coach. And the trifecta was that if he could teach math and science, that would be even better.”

Dean recalled that Carver’s athletic teams’ schedule generally didn’t have them play against white high schools during the regular season, except for a few that would schedule them.

Carver had its own gym, which was the largest public facility that housed events for Blacks in Phoenix. It held basketball games, plays, lectures, marching-band performances for pep rallies, and more. The basketball team received hand-me down items such as shoes and apparel from other schools in the Phoenix district. The team only scrimmaged against each other, not the white schools North High, West High and Phoenix Union.

“They would take us by bus to our different games on the outskirts (of the city) because there were no city schools that we could play against because they were white.”

The Catholic high school Phoenix St. Mary’s and the now-defunct Phoenix Tech were the only Phoenix schools that Carver competed against during regular seasons because they had an integrated student enrollment, Dean recalled. The team also played Buckeye and other schools outside of Phoenix, such as Bisbee, he said.

“It was us against the world,” Dean said. “We knew what we were up against. So, whatever we did practice-wise or whatever, we went above and beyond. For example, when we went to the state tournament, they had us playing at 8 o’clock in the morning. The coach had us at practice at 7:15 to prepare for that. I told George Greathouse that if you played on a team that was (racially) mixed, you couldn’t be as good as the other guys on the team. You had to be better. If you were good, you didn’t play or you didn’t start.”

‘Come out for my team’

Dean, who was born in Memphis, Tennessee, grew up in the Matthew Henson public housing project of Phoenix, built near Seventh Avenue and Buckeye first developed in the 1940s. The projects were named after the African-American explorer who discovered the North Pole. 

The 6-foot-4 Dean taught himself how to play basketball after his late brother Charles Dean — who coached Phoenix South Mountain to the 1987 Class 5A state title — asked T.C. to begin playing.

Dean joined the Carver varsity as a senior in the 1953-54 school year, after learning how to play the game one year prior. The idea of joining the team came up when his math teacher, Leon Jordan, had difficulty reaching for a piece of chalk in the classroom.

“Let a tall man get that,” Dean recalled saying to Jordan. “‘If you have all that height, come out for my team,’” Jordan replied.

Dean also played football. He considered himself better at that sport, but he became the basketball team’s third-leading scorer and second-best rebounder, producing nearly 15 points and 13 rebounds per game. His teammates included leading scorer Charles Christopher and Albert Nealy, the top rebounder, both of who went on to ASU.

Dean remembers that Blacks couldn’t walk onto the bigger basketball courts inside Phoenix gyms occupied by whites. Black athletes played at East Lake Park at 16th and Jefferson Street, Harmon Park on Phoenix’s west side behind Memorial Hospital, and Grant Park which was in the mostly Latino area of the city.

The limits on where they could play were an extension of other aspects of segregated life that extended to places like movie theaters (Blacks-only sections), public swimming pools (only those set aside for Black residents) restaurants or stores.

 “That’s the way it was. It was not a good time to be Black,” Dean said. “There were racists on every corner. The park. The eating places. There were only one or two places we could go and meet. We couldn’t go to a lot of places. And as far as eating places was concerned, they’d have like a barbecue stand, someone might put up a hamburger joint and things like that, but there were no Black restaurants.”

In that environment, the Carver Monarchs basketball team thrived.

In 1951, it made the championship game in its state class, losing 58-50 to undefeated Miami, which had a large Hispanic student body. In 1952, the first under Leon Jordan, it made it back to the title game and won, defeating Ajo, 65-49. The Monarchs returned in ’53, losing to Scottsdale High in a tight game, 54-53. 

It’s final championship came in 1954, when Carver downed Duncan, 47-39.

Then everything changed.

Integration ends Carver’s reign 

Thurgood Marshall also once stated, “Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.”

Several prominent Black organizations such as the multi-racial Greater Phoenix Council for Civic Unity, NAACP, Urban League, Council for Civic Unity and others lobbied to end school segregation in Arizona starting in March 1948. A suit eventually was filed over the issue.

In 1953, a Maricopa County judge ruled the state’s law allowing segregated schools was unconstitutional. Phoenix district administrators, citing cost factors, moved to integrate schools for the 1954-55 school year, before the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling argued by Marshall that desegregated schools. (Another state judge had ruled in another case that segregated elementary schools, which also were in place, violated the 14th Amendment of the  U.S. Constitution).

Soon after, the U.S. Supreme Court made its decision.

After the Phoenix schools integrated in fall 1954, Phoenix Union High School absorbed Carver’s student body, as well as several teachers and coaches. Leon Jordan moved on to teach math and science at Camelback and Trevor Browne high schools in the PUHSD.

He eventually won an Arizona’s High School Teacher of the Year award and a runner-up for National Teacher of the Year honors. He became the head of the Science department at Trevor Browne, plus taught botany and zoology at Arizona State and Grand Canyon University.

Dean, who graduated from Carver in ’54, said, “It was an easy transition. They didn’t have any problems when they went over there.”

AIA records show that Phoenix Union High School’s basketball team, which competed in the equivalent of 5A, went on to win state basketball championships six out of the next seven years, from 1955-61. (Prior to integration, it last won a title in ’44, but was in the final in ’51 in its division).

Dean moved on and played on the Phoenix College men’s basketball team for one year before he enrolled as the first Black student-athlete to receive a scholarship at Grand Canyon.

Dean was nicknamed “Mr. 20-20” because he averaged nearly 20 points per game and still holds GCU-record rebounding average of 20.2 points per game from the 1957-58 season. GCU remains only men’s basketball team among the four Arizona four-year colleges to boast an undefeated record, during his time there.

Dean, who went on to a 50-year career in education in the Phoenix Elementary School District, now has a scholarship in his name at GCU worth $10,000, donated by his physical therapist Stephen Haynes, owner of PRO Motion Physical Therapy in Phoenix.

“What I accomplished in life, I stand on the shoulders of other Blacks in Arizona,” Dean said, citing several prominent residents including Phoenix’s African-American councilman Morrison Warren (the grandfather of Big Ten conference commissioner and GCU alum Kevin Warren).

“But I was just being me. Growing up in the projects, I had found out years later that guys from there looked up to me as a role model. They told me that they went to college, and if I came from the projects and went to college, they felt that they could.”

Have tips for us? Reach the reporter at [email protected] or at 480-486-4721. Follow his Twitter @iam_DanaScott.

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Have tips for us? Reach the reporter at [email protected] or at 480-486-4721. Follow his Twitter @iam_DanaScott.

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