New from the University of Illinois Press:
Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands: Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and Black Activism, by
Will Guzmán (Florida A&M University/Carrie Meek-James Eaton Southeastern Regional Black Archives
Research Center and Museum). A description from the Press:
Physician Lawrence A. Nixon fled the racial
violence of central Texas to settle in the border town of El Paso. There
he became a community and civil rights leader, working on integration
and antilynching cases and cofounding the local NAACP chapter. In 1923,
Nixon challenged the law that banned African Americans from voting in
the Democratic primary. His victory in two subsequent Supreme Court
decisions paved the way for dismantling all-white primaries across the
South.
Will Guzmán delves into Nixon's lifelong, and mostly
unknown, struggle against Jim Crow. Linking Nixon's successful activism
to his independence from the white economy, support from the NAACP, and
indefatigable courage, Guzmán places Nixon within the context of the
larger historical narratives of his era. At the same time, he sheds
light on Nixon's presence in both symbolic and literal borderlands--as
an educated professional in a time when few went to college, as someone
who made waves when most feared violent reprisal, and as an African
American living on the mythical American frontier as well as an
international boundary.
Enlightening and powerful, Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands
adds to the growing literature on African Americans in the Southwest
while exploring a seldom-studied corner of the Black past and the civil
rights movement.
More information is available
here.
