Photo credits: Nicole Craine for The New York Times
Over the course of his life, Dr. Edgar Daniel Nixon (pictured) was an Alabama civil rights activist and worker’s union organizer, He was instrumental in organizing the historic Montgomery bus boycott in 1955.
Dr. Nixon served as president of the NAACP, the Montgomery Welfare League, and the Montgomery Voters League in his hometown. He was already well-known for helping to create the Montgomery section of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, also known as the Pullman Porters Union.
He was “one of the leading voices of the Negro community in the field of civil rights” and “a symbol of the dreams and ambitions of the long-oppressed people of the State of Alabama,” according to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The NAACP presented Dr. Nixon with the Walter White Award in 1985.
Dr. Nixon’s home in Montgomery was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 1986, a year before his death, in honor of his state leadership. Dr. Nixon died on February 25, 1987, in Montgomery, Alabama, at the age of 87.
On Edgar D. Nixon Avenue in Montgomery, there is an elementary school named after him, Edgar D. Nixon Elementary School.
No comments