Drusilla Nixon

Drusilla Elizabeth Tandy Nixon (July 15, 1899 – May 10, 1990) was a community activist and music educator.

Background

The daughter of Maud Grant and John Clifford Tandy, she was born Drusilla Elizabeth Tandy in Toledo, Ohio and was educated at Waite High School and the University of Toledo.

Career

After the University was forced to close due to the 1918 flu pandemic, she was hired by the American Missionary Association in Georgia and sent to Atlanta. By January 1920, she was working as a shipping clerk in Toledo. In November 1920, she moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. After her divorce from her first husband, she returned to Toledo. She served in a number of positions at Tuskegee Institute, including assistant to Emmett Jay Scott. She had moved to El Paso for eighteen months in October 1929 to help deal with an asthma condition;[1] Lawrence Nixon, later her third husband, was her physician during this time. In 1935, she organized the Black Girl Reserves at the YWCA there. She was a member of the Phyllis Wheatley Club in El Paso for forty years, serving as club president at one time. She was the first black woman to serve on the board for the El Paso YWCA.[2] She was also vice-president of the Church Women United, the choir director for St. James Myrtle United Methodist Church, co-chair of the El Paso Parks and Recreation Department, and a member of the El Paso Mental Health Board and the El Paso Council of Churches. In 1945, she became a charter member of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare in El Paso.[3][4] In 1978, she was named Woman of the Year by the Phillis Wheatley Club of El Paso.[5]

Private life and death

She was married three times: first to Webster L. Porter, an attorney and newspaper owner, in 1920; the couple divorced two years later after she gave birth to a daughter. She next married Ernest Ten Eyck Attwell; the couple, already separated, divorced in November 1935. She married Dr. Lawrence Aaron Nixon a few days later.[3]

Nixon enjoyed teaching music to children; her students included congresswoman Barbara Lee.[3]

She died in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the age of 90.[3]

Legacy

Nixon was posthumously named an honorary member of the El Paso Women's Hall of Fame.[4]

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References
  1. Davis, Mary Margaret (11 May 1990). "Widow of El Paso Civil Rights Pioneer Dies in Albuquerque". El Paso Times. Retrieved 18 May 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. "Nixon Helped Bring Change". El Paso Times. 24 February 2009. p. 1D. Retrieved 18 May 2019 – via Newspapers.com. and "Nixon". El Paso Times. 24 February 2009. p. 2D. Retrieved 18 May 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. "Nixon, Drusilla Elizabeth Tandy". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association.
  4. Guzman, Will (2015). Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands: Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and Black Activism. p. 171. ISBN 0252096886.
  5. "Phillis Wheatley Club Names Woman of the Year". El Paso Times. 4 June 1978. Retrieved 18 May 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
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