Note: This is an update of a story first published in 2023.
Blacks have played a major – though often under-appreciated – role in El Paso’s history. So I thought I’d offer a few suggestions for El Paso-connected books to read during Black History Month to deepen your understanding of this history.
This list is heavily influenced by two El Pasoans who’ve expanded my understanding of our community’s Black history. The first is my friend and mentor, Maceo C. Dailey Jr., the director of UTEP’s African American Studies program from 1996 until his death in 2015. The other is best-selling author Ron Stallworth, who grew up in El Paso, built a career as a police officer in the Mountain West, then returned home after retiring.
“African Americans in El Paso” is a primer on local Black history, from the Africans who accompanied Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century through Texas Western College’s historic national basketball championship and 21st century entrepreneurs. Published in 2014, it was written by Dailey, Kathryn Smith-McGlynn and Cecilia Gutierrez Venable.
“Tuneful Tales” is a 1925 self-published book of poetry by Bernice Love Wiggins, who lived in El Paso at the time. Her work showed the influence of the Harlem renaissance in the Chihuahuan Desert. Dailey discovered the book in his research and published it with Texas Tech University Press in 2002.
Dailey’s research also discovered an unusual book by two stalwarts of the Harlem renaissance, Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes. “Boy of the Border” is a coming-of-age tale about the journey of a 12-year-old Mexican boy and his uncle across the American Southwest. It was never published in the authors’ lifetime, but Dailey discovered the manuscript and published it in 2010 through Sweet Earth Flying Press, which he owned with his wife, Sondra. El Paso artist Antonio Castro L. created illustrations for the book.
“Wheresoever My People Chance to Dwell: Oral Interviews with African American Women of El Paso” is a 2000 collection edited by Dailey and Kristine Navarro. Interview subjects include Leona Ford Washington, who played a key role in preserving Black history in El Paso.
Stallworth’s two books aren’t set in El Paso, but the stories are deeply influenced by his roots on the border.
His first book is “Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime,” which is the true story of how a pioneer Black police detective in Colorado Springs infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1970s. The book became the inspiration for Spike Lee’s film “BlacKkKlansman,” which earned Lee his first Academy Award.
Stallworth’s second book came out last year. It’s called “The Gangs of Zion: A Black Cop’s Crusade in Mormon Country” and documents Stallworth’s efforts to convince Utah leadership that West Coast gangs and gangsta rap were reshaping conservative Mormon communities in the 1990s.
“The Gangs of Zion” was an El Paso Matters Book Club selection in 2024. At a book club event to discuss his work, Stallworth showed off his rhyme skills by extensively rapping some of the greatest hits from NWA and other legends of that era. Some of the words in the lyrics had never been used at previous book club events.
The final book on this Black History Month list was recommended by Bill Clark, proprietor of Literarity Book Shop in West El Paso. “Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and the White Primary” by Conrey Bryson tracks the decades-long effort by a Black El Paso physician to end the exclusion of non-white voters from the Texas Democratic primary.
In the 1920s, winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to election in most of Texas, including El Paso. Party rules prohibited Blacks from voting in the all-white primary, effectively disenfranchising them even if they participated in general elections.
Nixon’s two-decades long legal fight, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court, eventually brought an end to the all-white primary. It was a precursor to later voting rights and civil rights cases that brought an end to Jim Crow laws.
Some of these books may not be easy to find, but check with the El Paso or UTEP libraries.
The post Books with El Paso ties you can read for Black History Month appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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