HOUSTON- Rev. William Alexander Lawson is the founding Pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. Established in March 1962 with 13 members, the congregation has grown in excess of 3,500 members. Lawson did his undergraduate work at Tennessee A&I State University, Nashville, Tennessee where he received a Bachelor of Arts Degree.
He graduated cum laude from Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Kansas where he received the Master of Theology and the Bachelor of Divinity degrees. While there, he majored in New Testament Interpretation and was appointed Teaching Fellow in Homiletics. In 1986 he received an Honorary Doctor of Divinity from Howard Payne University, in Brownwood, Texas; and in 1993, he received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Houston.
Early in his career, Lawson served as director of the Baptist Student Union and Professor of Bible at Texas Southern University in Houston. He shared in the formation of the first Afro-American Studies Program at the University of Houston, where he taught classes in Sociology and the Black Church.
He established a service agency, to serve community needs of citizens in the inner city, the Central City Comprehensive Community Center and a program to register and mobilize voters in the heavily African-American precincts of the city. In 1996, a group of friends gifted to him a non-profit organization called the William A. Lawson Institute for Peace & Prosperity (’WALlPP”).
The WALIPP Preparatory Academy, is the first charter school for boys grades 6 through 8 in the nation. He is the recipient of the 1991 Silver Beaver Award in support of Scouting. In its 35-year history, Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church’s troops have produced over 100 Eagles.
He is married to Audrey H. Lawson. They have four children – Melanie, Cheryl, Eric and Roxanne .
We salute Rev. William Lawson as this week’s Living Legend and invite you to send in who you think will make a good Living Legend and why they should be honored.