He was born on July 27, 1926 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He was born in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa known as “Black Wall Street”. His father Hartwell Ragsdale was a mortician and owned a mortuary and his mother Onila Violet Ragsdale was a school teacher. His father’s mortuary was burned down during the vicious “Tulsa Riots” of 1921. These riots occurred on May 31 and June 1, 1921, Hostile Whites were fueled by racial hatred and envy of the progress of “Black Wall Street”. 

Lincoln Ragsdale graduated from in 1944 Douglass high school in Ardmore, In 1945 he graduated from the Tuskegee Airmen Air Corps Field in Alabama. Prior to his graduation, he was a victim of police brutality. His parents drove to Phoenix from Oklahoma to see attend his graduation in their 1940 Buick. Ragsdale took it to a service station. The attendant didn’t like the way Ragsdale made his order and called the police on him. He stated in the Arizona Republic news article on March 19, 1983, “I stopped the car, and they stopped. And three men got out of the car and yelled: “Let’s get that Nigger!”. They knocked me down and one of the officers kicked me in the head. They only thing that saved me was that it was really muddy, and his foot was caked over with mud so he didn’t really hurt me.”

“One of them yelled ‘ Let’s kill the nigger!’ and another one said, ‘Naw’. He’s got a military uniform on, Let’s just scare him.’ So they beat me up some more. I was scared, more scared than I’ve ever been in my life.” 

He was transferred to Luke Airforce Base in Glendale, Arizona. He was one of the first black men to be stationed at Luke Airforce Base. Upon his arrival, he had to deal with the covert racial hostility of his white roommate. His roommate decided that he would sleep in his car before he would share a room with an African American. 

In 1949 he married Elanor Dickey and they had four children Elizabeth, Gwendolyn, Lincoln Jr., and Emily. Ragsdale was elected to the Greater Phoenix council for Civil Unity board and, he was the first Vice president of the Maricopa Chapter of the NAACP.

In 1952, he also founded the Ragsdale Insurance Agency as well as he was the broker of the Home Realty and Investment Company of which he was the founder. He desegrated the military veteran's section of Greenwood Memorial Park Cemetery by publicizing the Thomas case in the Black Press. 

In 1953, Ragsdale helped fund a lawsuit against Phoenix Union High School, as a result, Judge Fred Stuckmeyer declared segregation illegal in the state of Arizona. This lawsuit was won just before the U.S. Supreme Courts Brown vs. Board of Education decision the made segregation unconstitutional nationwide.

In 1968, The Fair Housing Act made housing discrimination illegal. In Arizona, there was a “red line” that divided the whites from the Blacks. Blacks were not allowed to live north of Van Buren. Lincoln Ragsdale Sr.’s family was the first Black family to move across the “red line”. He moved his family to the all-white block of 1600 W. Thomas Rd. Soon after they moved in a petition circulated that suggested that the Ragsdale family move elsewhere because their children wouldn’t be happy there. The Ragsdale family stayed in their home until they were ready to move. When they moved, they moved further North into a beautiful home in Clearwater Hills. Ragsdale said, “You can accept, rebel, or excel, he said, you don’t make a change by running.”

He was named by President Ronald Reagan the eighth member of the Federal Advisory Committee of Small and Minority Business Ownership. Lincoln J. Ragsdale Sr., a member of Sigma Pi Phi fraternity, died in Paradise Valley, Arizona on June 9, 1995, at the age of 68. Ironically, he was buried in the Greenwood Memorial Park Cemetary that he desegregated. Ragsdale worked for 40 years for the betterment of the lives of Black people in Arizona. The Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport Executive Terminal was dedicated to Ragsdale in 1996.