Home of activist, Robert ‘Bob’ Hicks, unveiled as Louisiana’s 7th Civil Rights trail marker
6th September 2022 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
On August 11, 2022, Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser and the Louisiana Office of Tourism unveiled the seventh marker of the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail, the historic Robert “Bob” Hicks House, located at 924 Robert “Bob” Hicks Street in Bogalusa. In 2015, the Robert “Bob” Hicks House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“We are proud to tell the extraordinary story of Robert ‘Bob’ Hicks and the importance of his house. It was a regular meeting place and safe place for civil rights workers. It’s amazing that the family continued to live in the house with all of the civil rights activities going on around them,” said Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser. “It’s a privilege to honor Mr. Hicks, his family, and all those from Bogalusa who strived to make rights real in Louisiana.”
Robert “Bob” Hicks and Valeira Payton-Hicks’ three-bedroom home was the launching pad for the Bogalusa Civil Rights Movement. The house was a safe haven for civil rights workers and officers of the Bogalusa Civic and Voters League (BCVL), and the local Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE, met there. It was a medical triage station, a meeting place, and, most famously, the birthplace of the Bogalusa chapter of the Deacons for Defense and Justice (DD&J).
The DD&J was an armed defense group of Black WWII veterans, business people, and union workers who defended and protected civil rights workers and Black citizens from the Ku Klux Klan and racial violence by White citizens, some of whom were law enforcement officers.
In the middle of the national 20th Century Civil Rights Movement, specifically in 1965, the Hicks’ breakfast room became the communications center for the Deacons; the living room was an unofficial office for the civil rights attorneys who pioneered groundbreaking lawsuits in education, housing, and employment.
Bob and Valiera reared five children in the home. Charles Hicks, Gregory Hicks, Valiera Arlean Hicks, Robert L. Hicks, and Barbara Hicks-Collins.
Mr. Hicks passed in 2010, and Mrs. Hicks, 93, is still living in Bogalusa. Charles lives in Washington, D.C., Gregory in Hammond, La., and Barbara lives in Bogalusa. Valiera Arlean and Robert are deceased.
“They (KKK) cut the telephone lines. My parents called a friend who came around back and put us (children) on the floor in the back of the car. We couldn’t call to find out what was going on. It was very traumatic,” remembers Barbara Hicks-Collins.
Hicks-Collins vividly remembers February 1, 1965, when the Klan-friendly Bogalusa Chief of Police Claxton Knight and Sheriff came to their home demanding they turn over two of CORE’s White field organizers, Steve Miller and Bill Yates.
“There was an ordinance in Bogalusa that Whites couldn’t fraternize with Blacks. My Daddy told them ‘No. Absolutely not.’” Hicks-Collins recalls.
Hicks had good reason to fear putting the civil rights workers in the hands of the police.
Remembering the police’s role in the murders of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, six months earlier in Mississippi, Hicks refuses. “We just knew that if Yates and Miller left our house at that moment, we would never see them alive again,” Robert Hicks recalled.
Police Chief Knight refuses to provide protection for the CORE workers: “We have better things to do than protect people who aren’t wanted here,” he says, warning them to get out of town for their own safety and offering an escort if they agree to permanently leave Bogalusa.
Hicks started calling Black men to come to protect and defend his home and the CORE workers. “They came from all directions,” Hicks-Collins says. “They were armed. Nothing happened.”
But several days later, Miller and Yates encountered the police and the KKK.
“On February 3, 1965, Miller and Yates returned to town. They were followed by two police cars from one meeting to another. When a car filled with six whites came up, the police disappeared. Yates jumped out of the car to run into a restaurant for help. At least two whites beat him severely, breaking his hand in two places.
As the night wore on, phones up and down the block were cut off. The leader of the Ku Klux Klan in the area was seen sitting in a police car with the deputy sheriff two blocks away. Finally, at 10:30, Yates and Miller were given a police escort to Baton Rouge. The next day Yates entered a hospital in New Orleans to treat his hand.” Carl Hufbauer – Negro Community vs. Crown Colony
Burt Wyre, a neighbor of Hicks, said matters would only get worse, and they (Black men) needed to do something.
Hicks-Collins recalls that the Jonesboro Deacons of Defense and Justice members came to her home on the “day Malcolm X was assassinated,” February 21, 1965, and the first meeting of the Deacons of Defense – Bogalusa Chapter occurred there. “My dad went to the Union Hall to make the announcement about the group. Its mission was to defend and protect.”
Bogalusa’s Civil Rights History
“When a state injunction drove the NAACP underground in 1956, activists formed the Bogalusa Voters & Civic League (BVCL). In 1959, the White Citizens Council orchestrated a purge that removed 85 percent of Afro-American voters from the Washington Parish rolls. A court ruled the purge unconstitutional in both purpose and effect, but that did not restore Black voting rights. By 1964, most parish Whites were registered, as were roughly 20 percent of Afro-Americans.
“According to the 1960 Census, Blacks make up more than a third of the 44,000 people who live in Washington Parish and some 35-40 percent of Bogalusa’s 23,000 inhabitants are Afro-American. The town is thoroughly segregated — neighborhoods, schools, parks, restrooms, lunch counters, and, of course, jobs. There are no Black cops, firemen, or public officials,” the Civil Rights Movement Archive (CRMA) reports.
Even in 1964, Bogalusa remained segregated as a result of city ordinances. Business owners were unwilling to end segregation as required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because of intimidation by the Klan.
“In January 1964, the KKK stages multiple cross burnings around the parish. On May 30, some 800 Klansmen, half in white hoods and robes, stage a Klan rally in Bogalusa. Wearing hoods to conceal identity violates Bogalusa’s anti-masking ordinance and Louisiana’s anti-Klan laws. Still, city officials make no effort to enforce those laws or halt the “Klonklave.” Uniformed police (some of whom are Klansmen themselves) work with the Klan marshals to facilitate the event. In an article for The Nation magazine, author Paul Good later refers to Bogalusa as “Klantown USA.”
Led by the Berkeley CORE, students arrive in Bogalusa over their spring break in 1965. When they return to the Bay Area, they are interviewed by radio host Ira Blue who asks them if the police provided protection:
“Protected us? They terrorized us!” The police yell insults and use as much obscene language at picketers as the hecklers; they feel free to swing their billy clubs at youthful picketers; and it pleases them to stand by and laugh while snakes, rocks, lighted cigarettes, and insecticides are thrown into the picket lines and marches. An effort has been made to get badge numbers of these police officers; however, the action was frustrated when both State Troopers and City Police began covering their badges with metallic tape to hide the numbers.
When Negroes began picketing this year, the “city fathers” saw fit to pass scores of new ordinances prohibiting civil rights activity. One rule states that no more than two people may walk a picket line and that no more than three people can assemble for purposes of lawful assembly. All laws and ordinances are consistently enforced upon Negroes, but not on the whites.
This was the climate college students from Kansas State University, and U.C. Berkeley found during Freedom Summer. The Hicks and other civil rights leaders kept up their campaign for freedom, justice, and equality, despite the life-threatening activities of the KKK.
In May 1965, after the federal Department of Justice filed lawsuits against Bogalusa city leaders and the BVCL leaders negotiated with the city to integrate public facilities, Robert Hicks and several others attempted to use Cassidy Park. “When they arrive at the park, a gang of whites, hanging out with a group of cops, attack the Black residents with clubs and leather belts. A police dog is set on 15-year-old Gregory Hicks, son of Robert Hicks, biting him in the leg.”
“I lived with a giant and didn’t know it,” Hicks-Collins says about her father. “ “Every time he walked out the door, my mom says, “she was afraid he wouldn’t come back.”
Hicks-Collins credits the myriad of people who joined her father in their quest for equality and justice. “My father did a lot, but he was not the only one,” she says. A.Z. Young, Gail Jenkins, Royan Burris, Fletcher Anderson, Resse Perkins, James Farmer (CORE co-founder) and New Orleanians Dave Dennis Sr., and Ronnie Moore, New Orleans CORE members, and civil rights lawyers, Robert Collins, Lolis Elie, Nils Douglas, and Richard Sobol were among many others in Bogalusa’s civil rights battle.
BCVL officers A.Z. Young, Robert “Bob” Hicks, and Gayle Jenkins led the protest march, known as the “105-mile gauntlet.” The peaceful protesters were attacked by Klan members until National Guardsmen were sent to accompany the 600 marchers. At the State Capitol, protesters demanded Governor John McKeithen address hiring, voting, housing, and elections discrimination.
The BCVL was ultimately successful in integrating Bogalusa and achieving equality and justice.
Barbara Hicks Collins followed in her parents’ footsteps. She led the first student walkout of the segregated Central Memorial High School and Central Elementary School in 1965. She was there with her parents and siblings at the Bogalusa to Baton Rouge March, which began on August 10, 1967, and covered 105 miles across southeast Louisiana.
Hicks received a B.S. in Nursing from Dillard University in New Orleans and an MSPH in health administration and policy planning from Tulane University. After working as the regional administrator for the Louisiana Family Planning Program, she became the first African American Director of Nursing for the City of New Orleans Department of Health.
Today Hicks is the found-er/director of the Robert “Bob” Hicks Foundation, and her mother is the non-profit’s CEO.
Visit the Robert “Bob” Hicks Foundation to hear the voices of the movement and view documents and photos. https://www.hicksfoundation.org/
Editor’s Note: In 2021, the first Louisiana Civil Rights Trail markers were installed at Little Union Baptist Church in Shreveport, Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans, and the Louisiana Old State Capitol and A.Z. Young Park in Baton Rouge. In 2022, the second series of markers were installed at McDonogh 19 Elementary School in New Orleans and the Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum in Pineville.
The Louisiana Office of Tourism will relaunch the African American Heritage Trail on September 13, 2022, at Whitney Plantation in Edgard, La. The A.A. Heritage Trail covers the accomplishments and contributions made by Black Louisianans. A tour will be offered. Learn more at louisianatravel.com/african-american-heritage-trail.
This article originally published in the September 5, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
