Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands: Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and Black Activism by Will Guzman

Author:Will Guzman [Guzman, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, American, Campaigns & Elections, Social Science, Civil Rights, African American & Black Studies, Political Science, Political Process, General
ISBN: 9780252082061
Google: 9EMAkAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 29872934
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2015-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Southern Conference for Human Welfare

The SCHW had its formal beginnings in 1938 when a group of white southern liberals convened a meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, to discuss the wretched state of affairs in the region. The group mostly concerned itself with civil liberties, civil rights, and equal protection under the law for all citizens.

Drusilla and Lawrence Nixon joined the SCHW as charter members of the El Paso chapter in 1945. They also served on the organization’s executive committee. The Nixon name was well known locally due to Drusilla’s extensive community outreach and Lawrence’s status as a prominent physician, along with their political activism in trying to gain the right for Blacks to vote in the Texas Democratic primary, attempts to secure a pool for Blacks at Washington Park, and numerous other initiatives. By lending their name to the El Paso SCHW, the Nixons helped legitimize the group’s local efforts and promote its progressive agenda. However, the rest of the nation was not ready for this political worldview, and three years later in 1948, the Nixons appeared on the front pages of El Paso’s newspapers connected to an organization defined as having Communist ties.42 This in turn led people to question the Nixons’ patriotism, their loyalty to the United States, and even their belief in democracy. However, Drusilla and Lawrence Nixon were not Communists. In fact, years earlier, Lawrence Nixon was quoted as saying that although there were some Black Communists, “the race is not a fertile field for radical doctrines” and that African Americans simply wanted “true democracy as laid down in the constitution.”43

Nonetheless, the professed views of the Nixons and others within the SCHW did not stop the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from launching a formal inquiry that included covertly examining nearly every action of the El Paso SCHW. Almost from the inception of the El Paso chapter, the FBI had a surveillance program that included a number of informants within it.44 The FBI began monitoring the El Paso SCHW in November 1945 and documented that Beach Langston, an English professor at “the College of Mines,” was the chapter’s chairman and that Dorothy Mapp was its secretary.45 Twenty El Pasoans paid their dues at this initial meeting of the El Paso SCHW. Although they were not identified by name in the FBI report, presumably Drusilla and Lawrence Nixon were among this group.46 By October 1946, the FBI had three confidential informants, two of whom were Martha McCall and George Webber, who began to furnish the bureau with names of members, dates of meetings and events, and information about what the El Paso SCHW hoped to accomplish.47 Oddly, no mention is made of either Drusilla or Lawrence Nixon in any of the FBI Internal Security C reports that were generated by these informants.48

As members of the El Paso SCHW, the Nixons were part of a national organization whose supporters included well-known liberals such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Virginia Durr, Aubrey Williams, Walter White, Frank P. Graham, Lillian Smith, Lucy Randolph Mason, and James A.

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