A Life Of Service

Diane Ragsdale retiring from ICDC, planning different role

By Norma Adams-Wade

In a way, Diane Ragsdale is an architect and construction worker. Technically, of course, she’s a long-time community organizers, advocate, registered nurse, and former Dallas City Council member. But you see, she builds things. She does not carry a hammer and wear a tool belt. But she constructs communities and designs people.

Now she wants to do more of that – but in a different way. So, after 35 years at the helm, she has retired as executive director of the South Dallas-Fair Park Innercity Community Development Corporation (ICDC) at 4907 Spring Ave near Fair Park.

Ragsdale founded the non-profit in 1986 while serving on the Council, from 1984-1991, and representing the area where ICDC is located. She will remain for six months to help train her successor, Venus Cobb, who took office April 16. We will learn about Cobb in next week’s column.

“I have retired from ICDC, but not from the movement for justice,” said Ragsdale who also was Deputy Mayor Pro Tem during part of her Council tenure.

I was just thinking how future Black community and Dallas city leaders will benefit unknowingly from the years of labor Ragsdale amassed, both at city seats of power and leading protests in the streets of Dallas’ underserved communities. In a future Part II of this column, we will explore Ragsdale’s assessment of her past contributions and her plans for adding more.

ICDC’s mission was and is to improve the quality of life in that underserved community by building affordable homes for families, helping residents find and prepare themselves for jobs, improving their education, and providing better business services through economic development. ICDC implemented its plans by partnering with other nonprofits, agencies and residents that can help provide these specific needs.

Ragsdale stressed the importance of acknowledging how others helped implement her original vision for ICDC. That vision began with a detailed land-use and zoning plan, using much of what she learned in earlier years when she was appointed to the Dallas City Plan Commission. She expressed gratitude for others who helped implement the ICDC plan and hired managers and staff. Ragsdale played various roles, including as a volunteer, and finally in 2005 took the helm as managing director and founder.

“I was the visionary founder,” she stressed. “I want to show respect for others who were keenly involved.”

After retirement, Ragsdale says she wants to focus on areas of leadership that are vital, particularly in nonprofit leadership, but that often gets smothered under the day-to-day grind of keeping an operation afloat; that is, managing people, making payroll, raising funds, and such.

But when serving a community of people, where making their lives better is your goal, policy and advocacy are paramount, she says.

“My focus will be a new position as volunteer chair of policy and advocacy,” she announced.

In that role she seeks to create ways to transform old operating guidelines of people-serving entities that obviously do not work and advocate for changes that will work.

At ICDC, she will have more freedom to advocate on behalf of the nonprofit and space to consult and advise without daily pressures of management. Beyond ICDC, she said she can see herself tackling nagging community issues that beg for attention. Poor relationships between police departments and people in underserved communities is a prime example, she suggests. This column’s Part II will further explore that idea.

ICDC board member Thomas Muhammad recounted many ICDC achievements he said Ragsdale facilitated: He said it set national trends for low- to moderate-income homeowners; earned a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) award for housing models that led the nation; was key in holding Dallas Police accountable for unjustified fatal shootings; helped sponsor neighborhood safety workshops and helped set up neighborhood associations for safety; brought banks to the area for the first time; led the way to creating the South Dallas Fair Park Trust Fund that helps businesses in under-served areas before the fund ended early. At last count, Muhammad said ICDC had constructed about 400 homes in its target area. He gave Ragsdale major credit, saying her integrity, community compassion, and political sense were key.

“Diane was the force behind so many of these accomplishments,” Muhammad said. “She was a champion. You could not buy her and you could not scare her.”

Norma Adams-Wade, is a proud Dallas native, University of Texas at Austin journalism graduate and retired Dallas Morning News senior staff writer. She is a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists and was its first southwest regional director. She became The News’ first Black full-time reporter in 1974. norma_adams_wade@yahoo.com