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Is diane ragsdale still alive

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Diane Ragsdale

Diane Ragsdale | Dallas, TX | March 2017

Diane Ragsdale was born in Dallas on July 10, 1952.  The most important influences on her as a child were her mother and family, the church, the YWCA, and the NAACP youth council headed by Juanita Craft.  Through these institutions she learned that struggle marked the most successful path to creating change and applied that philosophy for the rest of her life. As a young adult, she tried to balance work with the South Dallas Information Center, SCLC, the NAACP, and her studies at Texas Woman’s University, which hamstrung her academic success and led to her mother pushing her to transfer to Dallas Baptist University to focus more on school.  When she graduated, she went to work at the Veterans Affairs hospital, but found it unrewarding.  She wanted to treat the causes of sickness, not the sickness itself, so she threw herself back into activism and won a seat on Dallas city council.

Ragsdale had many important issues that drove her in her time as a city council member, but the three she found most important were police mi

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In three short months Americans have shifted from tuning into the daily drama surrounding the democratic primaries, to daily Covid-19 briefings and debates over whether or not lives matter more than money, to now 24/7 coverage of the protests erupting across a reported 350 cities in the US (as of June 2) in the aftermath of the horrific killing of George Floyd—an act that has quickly become emblematic of systemic racism and the longstanding and escalating hatred, violence and injustices toward people of color in the US and in particular black people.

News commentators are characterizing the present moment as a “tipping point”—a country “on the brink,” unable to contain or carry the collective grief, anger, humiliation, fear, and desperation that so many are feeling. It is profound that performing arts venues and museums are dark at a moment when so many are clamoring for their thoughts, emotions, embodied pain, and voices to be expressed and heard by others. While our first impulse may be to mourn that many arts venues are darkened, I find myself sincerely wondering

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Diane Elizabeth Ragsdale

Diane Elizabeth Ragsdale, loving daughter of Mary Ellen Graves nee Schmitt (Carl) and the late Donald W. Ragsdale, was born on December 10, 1966, and passed away on January 12, 2024.

Diane is survived by her brothers, Michael Ragsdale (Mary Beth), Matthew Graves (Beth), Christopher Graves (Kandis), and Timothy Graves. Diane was aunt to Landon, Bailey, and Phoebe Graves, Maria Lewis, Matthew Ragsdale, Alyssa Carroll, Michael Ragsdale, Laura Ragsdale, and great-nephew, Cooper Ragsdale. She is preceded in death by her brother, Jonathan Graves. Diane cherished the years she spent in the Netherlands with Jaap Boter and his daughters, Flora and Sara, and their family.

Sanjit Sethi, President of Minnesota College of Art and Design, shared the following announcement with faculty and staff of the college:

It is with great sadness that I share the news that Diane Ragsdale, Director of Master of Creative Leadership (MACL), passed away suddenly at the age of 57. In the two years that Diane worked at MCAD, she moved mountains-leading and developing the successful

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