The New York Times published this obituary.
Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81
Someone had called to say the Ku Klux Klan was coming to bomb Robert Hicks’s house. The police said there was nothing they could do. It was the night of Feb. 1, 1965, in Bogalusa, La. The Klan was furious that Mr. Hicks, a black paper mill worker, was putting up two white civil rights workers in his home. It was just six months after three young civil rights workers had been murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.
Mr. Hicks and his wife, Valeria, made some phone calls. They found neighbors to take in their children, and they reached out to friends for protection. Soon, armed black men materialized. Nothing happened.
The NOLA Times Picayune had this:
Robert Hicks, Bogalusa civil rights activist, dies at age 81
Robert Hicks, a lion in the Louisiana civil rights movement whose legal victories helped topple segregation in Bogalusa and change discriminatory employment practices throughout the South, died Tuesday in his home. He was 81.
Mr. Hicks, who was born in Mississippi and moved to Bogalusa at a young age, was a member of the local NAACP and the Bogalusa Voter and Civic League. His lawsuits resulted in the desegregation of Bogalusa's public schools and the prohibition of unfair hiring tests and seniority systems at the local paper mill, owned by Crown Zellerbach Corp.
The latter case, which led to Mr. Hicks becoming the company's first black supervisor and which opened doors for black women, served as a model for similar discrimination cases in Louisiana and throughout the South.
For those of you not familiar with The Deacons for Defense and Justice, they were the feature of last weeks Tuesday's Chile, Black Kos, in my commentary:
"On non-violence and self-defense, African Americans and the right to bear arms"
The NOLA paper lists his achievements in the struggle over the many years of his life as an activist and freedom fighter:
Mr. Hicks began his civil rights work as a member of the local chapter of the NAACP before working with the Voter and Civic League. He helped conduct daily marches to protest racial discrimination by merchants and city government in a crusade that thrust Bogalusa into the national spotlight.
The Hicks family opened their home to white civil rights workers and national figures such as entertainer Dick Gregory and Congress of Racial Equality head James Farmer. Because of that, the family was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, which in turn motivated the formation of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, an armed band of African-American men who stood guard at the Hicks' home and protected civil rights workers in the city. The 2003 Showtime movie "Deacons for Defense" was loosely based on the group. Mr. Hicks filed a landmark lawsuit against the city and police department of Bogalusa, obtaining a federal court order requiring the police to protect protest marchers, and a lawsuit that overturned officials' refusals to allow protest marches.
In 1967, Mr. Hicks filed a suit against the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing, which resulted in the prohibition of the construction of public housing in segregated neighborhoods in Bogalusa.
The NY Times piece ends with this:
By 1968, the Deacons had pretty much vanished. In time they were “hardly a footnote in most books on the civil rights movement,” Mr. Hill said. He attributed this to a “mythology” that the rights movement was always nonviolent.
Mrs. Hicks said she was glad it was not.
“I became very proud of black men,” she said. “They didn’t bow down and scratch their heads. They stood up like men.”
He will be remembered by many.
Condolences to his wife, family and all of those who benefited from his long life of struggle towards freedom from injustice.