Robert Nixon was an African-American serial killer who...

Robert Nixon was an African-American serial killer who confessed to five murders and multiple assaults in Chicago and Los Angeles from 1936 to 1938. He was born on June 16, 1919, in the small town Tallulah, Louisiana. The press gave Nixon the nickname Brick Moron† after he confessed to the â€Å"brick bat murders† (Arney). Edna Worden, her 12-year-old daughter, Rose Valdez, Elizabeth Rice, and Zoe Damrell were a few of his many victims. After Nixon was arrested, he was sentenced to death and electrocuted on June 15, 1939 (Patillo). In the Lewiston Daily, June Arney wrote that Nixon broke into a woman’s home in Chicago in 1936 and looted her house before beating her to death with his â€Å"famous† brick. In 1937, he continued his killings in Los†¦show more content†¦These stories worsened racial tensions in Chicago, and the murder and resulting press frightened the white residents of the area, triggering â€Å"white flight from the once-elite areas that now bordered black districts† (Patillo). Nixon initially denied having any connection with the killings, but the Los Angeles Polices fingerprint evidence proved him wrong. During his trial, he eventually confessed to raping and murdering Anna Kuchta in 1937 and assaulting at least seventeen other women. However, he blamed his accomplice, Earl Hicks, for the murder of Johnson during his trial. Hicks, who was also under arrest, put the blame for Johnsons murder solely on Nixon. Nixon’s defense that his accomplice had killed the woman failed, and the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that they both were equally responsible for this murder. Nixon was convicted of the murder and was executed in the electric chair at the Cook County Jail in 1939 (Arney). When Richard Wright completed his draft of Native Son, Robert Nixon was charged with murdering a woman by beating her with a brick. In his essay, How Bigger Was Born, Wright admitted to copying details from press stories of the Robert Nixon case. By mixing his own â€Å"insight into the urban slum experience of African Americans,† Wright created the â€Å"disturbing portrait† of Bigger Thomas, who