Even today, Cary Wintz gets the same question every time he begins a lecture on African-Americans in West Texas.
He invariably is asked, “Are there any?” And when Wintz, a history professor at Texas Southern University in Houston, speaks about African-Americans in West Texas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people are even more astonished.
“How many?” usually is the next question, Wintz said Friday night during a lecture at Hardin-Simmons University.
“Enough to make a difference,” is his answer. “You don’t have to have numbers to make a difference — you just have to have heart.”
Wintz was the guest speaker for the eighth annual Guy Caldwell Western Heritage Lecture at Hardin-Simmons. Coincidentally, Friday also marked the first day of Black History Month.
A large audience turned out to hear Wintz’s stories about several African-Americans who made important contributions to West Texas history.
Among them were Lillian B. Horace (1880-1965) and Lawrence A. Nixon (1884-1966). Horace, an educator and novelist, grew up in Fort Worth and returned there after living in other places. As a teacher, she was appalled at the poor quality of supplies, equipment and schools for black children.
In 1916, she wrote a futuristic novel, “Five Generations Hence.” The book was set 120 years in the future, Wintz said, and featured two black women who went to Africa to build a utopian society away from the racism they knew in America.
The novel disappeared from American libraries, Wintz said, until a copy was found recently in the Fort Worth public library. Because of the significance of Horace’s literary contributions, her memoirs are in the process of being published by Texas A&M University Press, Wintz said.
Horace was one of the first women novelists and first black novelist in Texas, Wintz said.
Nixon grew up in Central Texas but traveled to El Paso as a child with his family. As an adult, he was a physician and moved his practice to El Paso after witnessing two lynchings near his home.
He became a well-known civil rights leader when, in 1924, he launched a 20-year struggle to get the right to vote for black Texans. At that time, Nixon had lived in El Paso for 14 years.
In 1923, the Texas Legislature had passed a law forbidding blacks to vote in the Democratic Party primary — the only primary at the time because Texas was a one-party state, Wintz noted.
When Nixon decided to test the law by trying to vote in the Democratic primary, election workers were friendly but told him they couldn’t allow him to vote.
“I know you can’t,” he replied, “but I’ve got to try.”
In 1927, Nixon won a United States Supreme Court case fighting the Texas law. The following year, the state Democratic Party passed a resolution stating that only white Democrats would be allowed to vote in the primary in July 1928.
Again Nixon filed suit, this time against the Democratic Executive Committee members. Again, the United States Supreme Court ruled in his favor.
The state and the Democratic Party persisted in fighting the court rulings but eventually blacks won out and gained the right to vote.
The final ruling allowing blacks to vote came after someone other than Nixon filed suit, but Wintz said Nixon was credited with persisting in the struggle to gain the right to vote.
“His efforts were the foundation for later victories,” Wintz said.
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