Intellectual In 1944, Wilson enlisted in the
U.S. Navy where he attended officer candidate school. After
World War II, he attended
Baylor University followed by
Texas A&M University, where he received a degree in mathematics in 1949. He next attended the
University of Texas and received a master's degree in
anthropology. He then attended the
University of Michigan as a graduate student and later received a Ph.D. from
University of California, Los Angeles in 1961. After World War II, the
GI Bill and his work for the
Texas Highway Department, as an economic planner for the
Jicarilla Apache Tribe in
New Mexico, and as an attendant in a
psychiatric hospital, helped to support his education. He was also involved in the early stages of testing of the
Salk polio vaccine.
Political He was politically active as a member of the
American Civil Liberties Union and the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He campaigned for Congress in 1970 during the
Vietnam War. Starting in 1971, he was a four-time city council member of Columbia, Missouri. He was mayor of Columbia Missouri for one two-year term in 1979. He received the MU Peace Studies Professor of the Year Award for 1998.
Personal On May 6, 1926, he was born in
Proctor, Texas, to Houston Clyde Wilson Sr. and Lena B. Purvis Wilson. On August 24, 1957, he married Betty K. Wilson, in
Ann Arbor, Michigan. He had four sons, Thomas H. Wilson, David A. Wilson, James A. Wilson and Benjamin C. Wilson and one daughter, Anne K. Ferrell. He died at home in Columbia, Missouri, after a long illness. == References ==