William A. Lawson: Houston Minister and Civil Rights Leader (1928–2024)

William Alexander “Bill” Lawson, Houston minister and civil rights leader, was born on June 28, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. He was the son of William Lawson, Sr., and Clarisse Adelaide (Riggs) Lawson. The 1930 census listed the family in St. Louis, where Lawson’s father worked as a waiter at a hotel, but his parents soon divorced. The 1940 census listed his mother as the head of the household, and she was employed as a stenographer for a local life insurance company. At some point soon after this listing, she married Walter Cade, who adopted young William. They moved to Kansas City, Kansas, where he grew up. He had ambitions to be a cartoonist but as a youth was involved in Sunday school and the Baptist Young Peoples Union at a local Baptist Church. His parents’ roles as deacons in the church were influential in his development, though he struggled with stuttering. Lawson graduated from Sumner High School in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1946 and earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Tennessee A&I State College (now Tennessee State University), a historically Black college in Nashville, in 1950. He subsequently earned a bachelor’s degree in divinity and a master’s degree in theology from Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City in 1950. While at seminary, he met Audrey Ann Hoffman. They married on January 30, 1954. They had four children.

In 1955 the Lawsons moved to Houston, where he served as director of the Baptist Student Union and professor of Bible at Texas Southern University (TSU). He later also directed the Upward Bound program for high school students at TSU. Lawson said he knew of segregation when they moved to Houston. “We had racial separation in Kansas,” he said, “but signs that said black and white section of the bus…that was new to me.” He recounted, “We simply were not going to buy clothes at Foley’s and we were not going to drink out of the colored water fountains. I simply was not going to allow my children to grow up in that kind of atmosphere.”

In June 1962 Lawson founded Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. The church grew from thirteen members meeting in the Lawson family home to about 12,000 members meeting at a modern campus in the 2020s. Audrey Lawson played an encouraging and important role in developing the extended mission of the church. Lawson recalled his wife telling him that he could not have a church with just preaching and singing. She also advocated that the church needed to reach out into the neighborhood and be involved with the problems of its people. He thought of this new church as being one that was “both religion and social movement.”

In 1960 some of Lawson’s TSU students sought his help to arrange sit-ins in Houston, just as their counterparts had done in North Carolina. Lawson was not in favor of it and urged them to think of their families and focus on finishing college. But the students held their sit-in anyway and were arrested. William and Audrey Lawson raised money to bail the students out of jail. The event signified the beginning of William Lawson’s involvement in the civil rights movement.

Integrating a community without the protests, firehoses, and police dogs seen in other Southern communities would take some work. Lawson participated in secret meetings between local Black leaders, White business owners, and other influential citizens at the Rice Hotel in downtown Houston. A local media blackout helped keep things quiet, if not low key, as Houston desegregated.

“The issue was not moral, it wasn’t ethical,” Lawson said. “The issue was not whether or not it was right to segregate. The issue was, what is going to be the economic potential of Houston at this time, in its history, if it doesn’t do something like this?”

As Lawson became active in the civil rights movement, he worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who spoke at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. King hoped Lawson would join him in Atlanta, but Lawson remained in Houston and organized the local office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King had founded.

“I chose to stay here because of the people who had started out as thirteen and who by the time were probably several hundred,” Lawson said, referring to his church congregation. Throughout his years as pastor, he remained a prominent civil leader and advocate for empowering the underserved through voter registration drives, involving boys in the Boy Scouts, cleaning up neglected areas in the community, and aiding homeless and jobless citizens.

In 1996 the William A. Lawson Institute for Peace and Prosperity (WALIPP) was established. The nonprofit advocacy agency assisted the poor and working-class community in Houston and worked to preserve affordable housing in the Third Ward. Activities included the establishment of two charter schools as well as apartment units for seniors. Lawson retired from Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in 2004 and became founding pastor emeritus, but he remained active after his retirement. Lawson teamed with two other local religious leaders, Rabbi Samuel Karff and Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza. They were informally called the “Three Amigos,” and they worked on social issues, including homelessness, racism, and inequality. They also contributed to the formation of the Harris County’s Public Defenders Office, which was established in 2011. Lawson spoke at the 2020 funeral service for George Floyd, a former Houston resident whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers set off race riots and sparked civil rights debates across the country.

Lawson received a number of honors during his life, including honorary doctorates from Howard Payne University, Texas Southern University, and the University of Houston. He was the recipient of the Boy Scouts of America Silver Beaver Award in 1991. In 2020 Rice University dedicated the Reverend William A. Lawson Grove, a tree-shaded walkway, in his honor. The city of Houston named the Reverend William “Bill” and Audrey Lawson Park in honor of the Lawsons in 2023. Lawson also published a book of daily meditations—Lawson’s Leaves of Love (2004).

William “Bill” Alexander Lawson died in Houston on May 14, 2024. He was ninety-five years old. His wife preceded him in death in 2015. “If the young people I can leave behind are people who likewise will have something to believe in and something that is going to drive them to do what is best for the underclass, that is what I’d like to pass on,” Lawson said.