Reprinted with the permission of The Times Herald
Mayor reflects on Black History in his lifetime
By Rachel Ravina
rravina@thereporteronline.com
West Coast native
COLLEGEVILLE >> Rev. Dr. Aidsand Wright-Riggins recently made the short drive from his Collegeville home to Ursinus College and was reminded, as always, that he does not look like the typical resident of the small town where he is mayor.
The 73-year-old became the first African-American person elected to the position in the borough in 2017.
He said he still stands out.
“I think I saw one African-American young lady in line getting coffee,” he remarked as he sat down in the college dining hall to talk about his life. “I think I’m the only African-American male that we’ve seen in these premises today here.”
Born in Riverside, Calif., Wright-Riggins spent much of his life in southern California, specifically south-central Los Angeles. His mother was a teacher and his father was a chef.
“I grew up in a segregated, apartheid-like community where the racial boundaries were really very, very clear,” he said. “Lynwood, which is a community right next door to Compton — when I was growing up I didn’t realize it was right next door. Lynwood was two miles over from Compton, but you would have thought there was a 20-foot-high barrier between Compton and Lynwood because Compton was Black, Lynwood was white.”
Wright-Riggins, an only son with three sisters, is part of a namesake that has carried on for generations in his family. His grandfather was Aidsand Franklin Riggins Sr., his father was Aidsand Franklin Riggins Jr. and he’s named Aidsand Franklin Riggins III. The name has been passed on to all the men in his family, including his son and grandson. However, the origin story goes back even further, with his ancestor, Washington Riggins, a slave who took the name Aidsand when he was freed.
“He was both a slave, and what they call a straw boss — an overseer of the other slaves — and the son of the enslaver, and he looked white, they say,” Wright-Riggins said. “They used to call him the ‘little Dutchman’ because he was short, looked like a white guy … at the emancipation he changed his name from Washington to Aidsand.”
Wright-Riggins said he’s been told the name derives from an “Americanized version of the Islamic call to prayer,” which is fitting for a man who’s long had an interest in religion. “For me I think it’s rooted to my own call,” he said. “From a very early age, I really understood my life and my work to be in service to others, whether that is through ministry or engagement in community or through working as an advocate for civil and human rights. To me that’s part of what I feel like a mantle that’s been given to me.”
Early calling
Wright-Riggins said he grew up in the Progressive National and American Baptist tenets of the Baptist ideology. He went to church and Baptist training union on Sundays and often participated in church activities.
“Literally since the age of seven, I really felt a deep call to ministry all my life. I was licensed to be a minister at 9 years old,” Wright-Riggins said.
Impactful day
“It was not until April 4, 1968 at 9 a.m. that I had my first real interaction, face-to-face, with a white student my age. I was 17 years old,” Wright-Riggins said.
It was the day famed civil rights leader and activist Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. It was a day Wright-Riggins would never forget.
He had been at Dominguez High School that morning, representing his Centennial High School as student body president at a “brotherhood day” event. Centennial High School was “the Black school,” Wright-Riggins said. Dominguez High School was “the white school.” While he couldn’t remember much from their interaction, as those were typically reserved for athletic events when Wright-Riggins played on the school baseball and football teams, he did recall driving home later that day with his assistant principal.
“My assistant principal drives me home from that event, pulls up in front of my house, the radio’s on, and then there’s the announcement that Martin Luther King Jr. has been shot, and we sat in his car saying not a word to each other for 10 or 15 minutes, and then the announcement comes on that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed,” he said, news that would frame attitudes and experiences for years to come.
Alongside Ronald Reagan
Wright-Riggins went on to California State University’s Fullerton, and little did he know he’d soon come face-to-face with the actor and future president, then-California Governor Ronald Reagan in the spring of 1969.
“There was a lot of campus unrest back in those days,” he recalled.
Wright-Riggins was freshman class president and president of the Black Student Union at the time. He was seated next to Reagan in a conference room during a gubernatorial visit following an incident on campus.
“I came into that meeting with somewhat of an attitude because I knew I wasn’t a big fan of him as governor. I had suspicions about his politics and everything else,” he said.
Wright-Riggins said he pressed Reagan about “his owning property that had these racial restrictions,” which according to the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston, meant agreements had been in place years ago that prevented renting or selling property to certain groups of people.
“So I’m asking him, and I sit back and he’s starting to answer the question, working the room, and it was like ‘this guy’s amazing’,” Wright-Riggins said. “…And as he’s working the room, talking, he finishes, and then just says [racist expletive]. I did not know until then that eyes could squirt.”
“At that moment, I was caught between ‘I’m going to get you’ to the most profound admiration for a public performer that I’d ever seen in my life,” Wright-Riggins said. “…Tears just shot out my eyes, and I was both paralyzed and filled with rage, and at the same time, and at the moment, I jumped up. Everybody’s like ‘what the hell’s going on?’ And I’m confronting him and people are wondering what the hell is wrong with me. Because they didn’t hear him in his stage voice [say the expletive]. All they hear is this magnificent performer.”
That interaction would stick with Wright-Riggins for the rest of his life. He graduated from California State University with a bachelor’s degree in sociology of comparative religions. He later received a master’s of divinity from Berkeley School of Theology in 1975 and a doctorate of ministry from Virginia Union University in 2002.
Pastoring in LA
He began his religious career pastoring at churches in south-central Los Angeles.
One church he launched in nearby Lynwood was in a previously occupied “white church” that church officials gave to Wright-Riggins. When surveying old records in the church’s file cabinets he found something disturbing.
“There’s a picture of a sign that says ‘Welcome to Lynwood, California, a nice, white city. Let’s keep it that way,’” he recalled.
His pastoral work led him to meet his wife, Betty, who was attending a service at Sunnyside Baptist Church.
“While I was in the pulpit and speaking I looked out and I saw her,” he said.
Betty had worked with the local youth group. He set up a time with her to meet and the rest was history. Their first date was on Jan. 13, 1978 and they were married in late August of that same year. They’ve been married 46 years. Betty also serves as Ursinus College’s chaplain.
The two would go on to have three children, Aidsand, Imani and Kevin, as well as grandchildren, Aidsand, Nyla and Peyton.
Rising through ranks
After pastoring out west for more than a decade, Wright-Riggins rose through the ranks of the church to a leadership role with American Baptist Home Mission Societies in Valley Forge. His family moved to Montgomery County, settling in Collegeville in 1991.
As the CEO and executive director he was tasked with “providing oversight” for 5,800 churches, 16 colleges, nine seminaries, totaling 1.5 million people.
‘It happens here’
Wright-Riggins endured incidents of hate and racism at his Collegeville home after he moved to the Philadelphia suburbs.
“I’d had [racist expletive] written on my fence. I had my house egged,” he said. “At one point at one Christmas I had a sign on … the fence of my house saying Jesus was a refugee or something like that. Somebody stole that.
“I always fly the American flag at holidays but I also fly the African-American flag at the same time. I had that snatched down,” he continued. “And this is one of the most wonderful places on earth. I mean it’s a really great place to live. I mean to be honest, it’s a really wonderful place to live, but it happens here.”
Teachers who influence
Wright-Riggins attended his 50th high school class reunion in 2018 and saw his sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Jones. She gave him a copy of a paper he wrote that detailed what he wanted to be when he grew up: a minister and a football player for the Los Angeles Rams. One dream came true. Although his school had less resources as compared to the “white schools in the area,” Wright-Riggins underscored how he never forgot how teachers enriched his life.
“We had teachers, such as Mrs. Jones and my mother, who was one of the first African-American teachers in that school district, making the kind of impact on students’ lives I think makes a difference. … In spite of the fact that my granddaughter graduated with an A- average, is in a top HBCU and all that, [she] still cannot point to having had …a particular impact from any particular teacher and not having an African-American teacher. Something wrong with that to me,” he said.
Church to politics
Wright-Riggins decided to run for mayor after living in Collegeville for decades. He said the notion to seek office came in 2016 from his neighbors, some of whom were LGBTQ+, Muslim, and Chinese immigrants.
“In 2016 they felt scared. They felt under assault,” he said, recalling one of his neighbors who owned a furniture company was “attacked” and “told to go back to where he came from.”
The owner of the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts was “afraid to do business because of the assault on Muslims,” Wright-Riggins said.
He also took inspiration from his granddaughter, Nyla, a fellow “news junkie” who was concerned about the state of world events.
“She really wanted to know what I was going to do about it. And so … what I had learned from being a minister all of my life was how important it is to have a platform,” he said. “If you have a platform, if you have a pulpit, you’ve got influence and power.
“And although I had never run for office before, just watching the politicians and other people run for office I knew that even though you may not win an election you could still make an impact and influence,” he continued. “So I ran because I wanted to be the voice for my granddaughter, and I wanted to show my neighbors — who at that point in their lives felt more vulnerable than I did — I wasn’t afraid.”
He won in 2017, besting Republican incumbent Al Stagliano with 56.53% of the votes, according to Montgomery County election results. Wright-Riggins was the first African-American, Democrat ever elected to the position in Collegeville.
“It’s sad. It’s sad to so often be the first. It’s sad to be the first one,” he said adding, “at this time in our history we have to run out of being the first.
“I was the first African-American mayor in the history of this borough, but even more importantly to me, I was the first Democrat in the history of this borough.”
Collegeville’s political landscape has changed over the last several years, flipping the borough council from red to blue.
Now in his second term, goals of political advocacy, redevelopment and bolstering a partnership with Ursinus College remain top of mind, cultivating relationships with the Perkiomen Valley School District are also key, he said.
And, he’d like to see younger generations take an interest in local government.
“Where I’d like to see us go is towards a greater embracement of community, civic and political engagement, particularly among younger people,” he said. “One of the problems that I think is systemic to Pennsylvania small-time politics in general is that the municipalities that we work with are so small and underfunded that it is almost always really volunteer-based.”
Action and advocacy
Wright-Riggins is an active member of the Greater Norristown NAACP, serving as the organization’s political action chair. He’s spent time in and around the Montgomery County seat over the years, and remembered a striking moment while visiting a local barbershop when he first came to the area in the early 1990s. He categorized a barbershop as the “Black man’s country club,” a place that fosters a sense of community among the employees and patrons alike.
“Everybody’s sitting around talking, having a good time, and then it becomes apparent to me — I’m the only one in this room out of the 10 or 12 of us who is not under the control of the criminal justice system,” he said. “Every single Black man at that time had either been in jail, on parole, on probation, or even my barber at the time was incarcerated.”
Wright-Riggins acknowledged that while times have changed since the Jim Crow era in which his parents grew up, there hasn’t been as much progress moving forward as he’d like to see.
“I think the patterns of history just continue to repeat themselves,” Wright-Riggins said. “It’s “always been one-and-a-half steps forward and three-quarters-of-a-step back and … you begin to learn to live with it.”
