BIO
Wilson C Riles
Wilson C. Riles was principal of the Dunbar School during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
A graduate of Arizona State Teachers College (Northern Arizona University), he was
also the president of the NAACP and a radio talk show host during his years in Flagstaff.
Riles originally grew up in Louisiana, moved to Arizona with his adoptive parents to work in the lumbermills, but was recruited by Ms. Cleo Murdoch to attend college in Flagstaff.
In 1952-53, Dunbar Principal Riles and Flagstaff Superintendent Sturgeon Cromer worked to desegregate Flagstaff city schools.
It was agreed that the segregated Dunbar School would close at the end of the Spring of 1954 school year, and that Dunbar students would join other neighborhood students at the South Beaver School, which had been segregated for Mexican/Latino and Native American students since the 1920s.
Riles moved to Northern California in 1954 to lead the Fellowship for Reconciliation--an organization committed to peace and non-violence.
He was later elected Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state of California in 1970, and served two additional terms of office. He was the first Black person elected to statewide office in California since the Reconstruction Era.
Riles enrolled in Arizona State Teachers College (NAU), and graduated in 1940 with a major in education and a minor in history. He was one of first black students there and fought in WW2 as a pilot.
Wilson Riles served as a principal of Flagstaff's Dunbar School (present day Murdoch Center) until1954.
He and others worked to desegregate Flagstaff public schools, and was successful, prior to the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Due to his efforts, the Dunbar School was closed in 1954 and the students were sent to South Beaver and other local schools.
Riles joined the California State Department of Education as a Consultant in Certified Employment Practices, and was the Department's first African-American professional employee.
Riles was elected as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction of California. He was re-elected in 1974 and 1978. He was the first African American to be elected to an executive position in the California State government
Riles received an honorary master's degree from Northern Arizona University President, Lawrence Walkup
The historic course case decision - Larry P. v. Riles - the Supreme Court rules that as a result of the overrepresentation of Black children receiving special education services, the state of California will no longer utilize IQ tests to determine placement.