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Pastor Lawson retired in 2004. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri., and reared by Walter and Clarisse Lawson Cadre in Kansas City, Kansas, where he graduated from Sumner High School (1946). He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at Tennessee A. & I. State University in Nashville (1950). He returned to Kansas City to attend Central Baptist Theological Seminary, which conferred upon Bachelor of Divinity and Master of Theology degrees.
While in seminary, he married Audrey Hoffman Lawson of St. Louis. The Lawsons have four children, two grandchildren, and celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary in January of 2015. He came to Houston after graduation from seminary to serve as director of the Baptist Student Union and Professor of Bible at the new (eight years old) Texas Southern University (TSU). He served in that position for ten years, also becoming director of Upward Bound, a pre-college program for high school students on the TSU campus. During his years at Texas Southern University, a number of residents of the neighborhood persuaded the Lawson’s to establish a church near the university. Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church was established in their home in June1962. The congregation has grown to over 12,000 members, with many outreach programs, and is much respected in the community. Since the church was born and lived its infant years during the Civil Rights Movement, Lawson has been deeply involved in advocacy activities for African Americans, for Hispanics, for women, and for the poor.
In 1996, his 50th anniversary of being a minister, the Houston community honored him with the creation of a non-profit advocacy agency called WALIPP, the William A. Lawson Institute for Peace and Prosperity. That agency has gone before public officials and bodies on behalf of the underclass, and now has established two single-gender charter schools for boys and girls. WALIPP has also constructed 50 units of apartments for seniors in Houston’s Third Ward.
Finally, the agency is pulling together community development groups, churches, civic clubs, and local governments to redevelop the Third Ward so that aggressive real estate development will not expel all who need affordable housing. He has received honorary doctorates from Howard Payne College in Brownwood, the University of Houston, and Texas Southern University in Houston. He is the author of a book of meditations called Lawson’s Leaves of Love. Lawson worked in close partnership with wife Audrey, who worked with the Baptist Student Union at TSU, with the church for his 42-year tenure there, and now with WALIPP. Reverend Lawson retired from Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in 2004, but remained its Founding Pastor Emeritus until his passing on May 14, 2024.
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