The Reverend William Lawson, a beloved preacher and community leader known as “Houston’s pastor” who led efforts to desegregate the city, died Tuesday at the age of 95. Lawson was judicious in the fight for social justice, his prudent approach evident from the start. One spring evening in 1960, on the Texas Southern University campus, Lawson—then a lanky 31-year-old who’d arrived in Texas just five years earlier—invited a handful of students from the Progressive Youth Association, which was dedicated to advancing desegregation in Houston, into the den of the Baptist Student Union, where he was director. The group’s leader, a dynamic TSU law student and Army vet named Eldrewey Stearns, had gained some notoriety around campus after telling city council about a police beating he’d recently endured.…
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