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

Abstract

Reviewed by: Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands: Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and Black Activism By Will Guzmán Merline Pitre Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands: Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and Black Activism. By Will Guzmán. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Pp. 182. Illustrations, notes, index.) Will Guzmán has written an excellent, thorough life story of one of the twentieth century’s most influential civil rights activists. Known primarily for his legal fight against the Texas White Democratic primary statute through Nixon v Herndon (1927) and Nixon υ. Condon (1932), Lawrence A. Nixon contributed to voting rights in Texas and the United States. His efforts speak volumes about the importance of his activism during a twenty-two year struggle to destroy the constitutional basis of a law that affected the well-being of the entire nation’s citizenry. Born in Marshall, Texas, Nixon fled racial violence in his native East Texas in 1910 in hopes of finding a better way of life in multicultural El Paso. Guzmán argues that it was the racial climate in El Paso, and by extension the borderlands, that enabled Nixon to be the proactive fighter that he was: “El Paso had a white population that was … less prejudiced than the Deep South” (112), he notes, and as a borderland was more open to freedom. Using archival sources, oral history interviews, and photography, Guzmán provides not only vital information about Nixon’s professional career, but also new perspectives about his personal life and the issues that he championed. For example, Nixon established a local branch of the NAACP, protested against lynching, attempted to integrate a local swimming pool, and engaged in an effort to build an all-black hospital. This biography not only unearths previously unknown information about Nixon’s life, but also provides “new angles” to study the civil rights movement in Texas and elsewhere in the western region of this country. This book should be required reading for anyone studying voting rights and civil rights movements. In addition to being an important piece of [End Page 404] historical scholarship, this well-written monograph will easily find its way into classes dealing with Texas history, African American history, western history, and Chicano history. Merline Pitre Texas Southern University Copyright © 2015 The Texas State Historical Association