Travis Gibson said his father, Lester Gibson, was told by naysayers he had a “snowball’s chance in hell” of becoming the first Black representative elected to the McLennan County Commissioners Court. But when Gibson retired in 2018, he held the distinction of serving as a commissioner longer than anyone.
Gibson, a Vietnam veteran, social activist, instigator of “good trouble,” and 28-year commissioner, had his papers placed in the W. R. Poage Library at Baylor University during ceremonies Friday. More than 100 friends, family members and admirers gathered in Baylor’s new Hurd Welcome Center to honor Gibson, who decades ago would not have been welcome there.
Lester Gibson’s widow, Coque Gibson, along with their son Travis Gibson, right, and daughter Izegbe Lee, cut the ribbon Friday on some of the late commissioner’s archives now housed at his alma mater, Baylor University.
But Gibson later earned a degree at Baylor, continuing his pursuit of learning that began as a youngster in Teague, a dot on the map in Freestone County. He once followed a funeral procession on his bicycle, discovering it was bound for a neatly manicured, well-maintained white cemetery. Alas, the Black cemetery nearby appeared unkempt and woebegone, prompting Gibson’s later reflections on “the roads black folks travel,” said Izegbe Lee, Gibson’s daughter, who spoke of how much she admired her dad.
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The Lester Gibson papers will be housed in the Baylor Collections of Political Materials at the Poage Library. His family chose Baylor as repository of items discovered in his office at the McLennan County Courthouse and elsewhere following his retirement. His longtime office manager and successor on the commissioners court, Pat Chisolm Miller, assisted in assembling the material, personally delivering it to archivists at Baylor. Miller, who had accepted an invitation to speak at Friday’s unveiling, died unexpectedly Jan. 28 during a hospital visit, less than two years after Gibson’s death in June 2022. A framed photograph of Miller appeared next to the stage used by Friday’s speakers.
U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, who represented a Waco-anchored congressional district from 1991 to 2011, said he ran for Congress the same year Gibson ran for county commissioner. He said he would not have won the seat had Lester and his wife, Coque, not campaigned hard and delivered votes from Black neighborhoods Edwards needed to survive. He said he and the Gibsons became friends for life, but despite their closeness, he always addressed Lester Gibson as “commissioner,” while Lester called him “Congressman.”
Chet Edwards speaks Friday at the ceremony to unveil the Lester Gibson papers now archived at Baylor.
“I’m a better person for having known him,” Edwards said.
He said he could never know the societal challenges Gibson faced, including restrictions against dining in some restaurants or attending the school of his choice.
“Despite our close friendship, if my toes needed stepping on, he would step on them, but always for the right reason,” Edwards said. “For the rest of my life I will miss Lester Gibson, but I’m comforted knowing his legacy will be remembered here at his alma mater, Baylor University.”
Edwards took issue with opposition to the teaching of America’s checkered past regarding civil rights and racism.
“Admitting our past mistakes does not diminish us,” he said. “It teaches us to learn from our mistakes.”
Gibson in 2002 lobbied hard to have a memorial placed in the McLennan County Courthouse acknowledging the lynching of Jesse Washington on May 15, 1916, by a mob that dragged his body from the courthouse. He was clubbed and stoned and then hanged from a tree in front of City Hall. In addition to the telling of the “Waco Horror,” a resolution Gibson advocated for states that the members of the commissioner’s court “acknowledge and offer an expression of regret” for the incident. Washington had been hastily convicted of raping and killing a white woman immediately before the lynching.
A one-page resolution condemning past lynchings in McLennan County was put on display in the Courthouse rotunda in February 2011, the Tribune-Herald reporting the action ended Gibson’s nine-year crusade to publicly exhibit the document.
The archive at Baylor, part of which was on display for Friday’s ceremony, includes papers from Lester Gibson’s 28 years as a McLennan County commissioner, issues of newspapers he published and more.
Jeff Pirtle, who directs the Texas Collection and University Archive at Baylor, said Friday’s ceremony culminates a nearly six-year process that produced 44 boxes containing material about Gibson’s time as commissioner, including meeting minutes and agenda items. They also address Gibson’s co-founding of the Texas Organization of Black County Commissioners, and his efforts to bring fairness and opportunity to the marginalized. Lester and Coque Gibson published newspapers targeting the Black community and Black issues, and archives of those publications also are among the material housed at Baylor.
Pirtle said Gibson’s papers will be made available not only to those in academia, but to students wanting to know about what made Gibson and others like him tick and survive the circumstances he faced.
Travis Gibson, who spoke Friday of his father, remembered Gibson insisting that his family be exposed to great writers and thinkers. He loved to take his family to places of historical significance, especially his grandchildren.
Travis Gibson, who serves on the Bellmead City Council, called his father his mentor. He said he “shed a few tears, but mostly tears of joy” when he looked through some of the material to be archived. He said he lived through the good times and bad reflected in the paperwork.
Coque Gibson thanked Baylor University for its archival undertaking. She said there had been consideration given to including the material in a Black history museum to be built on Elm Avenue. She said that dream has not died.
Former U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards talks with Coque Gibson during Friday’s ceremony at Baylor.
