Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands

Situated within the “culturally complex area” of the Southwest borderlands, Will Guzmán’s book sheds light on the important and distinctive life of Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon (p. 3). Much of the scholarly terrain in this field has done well to cover Anglo, Spanish, Native American, and Mexican American relations and experiences. But in Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands, we are treated to the story of a middle-class African American doctor whose life unfolds in a border city, illuminating “the diversity of the Black past” (p. 5). Guzmán has written a terrific book. He traces Nixon’s life from New Orleans (where his father worked as a train employee) to Marshall, Texas (where he completed his undergraduate degree), and finally to El Paso (where he practiced medicine for nearly fifty years). His move West had everything to do with the racism and violence that African Americans faced in the South. Black physicians in particular left the region at a rate of more than one in ten because of racial terrorism.

African american · Civil rights · Diversity (politics) · Ethnology · Political activism · Political science · Politics · Racism · Situated · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · American History and Culture · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society