Louise Hicks, activist and congresswoman, dies

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 23, 2003 | by Mark Pratt, Associated Press

BOSTON -- Louise Day Hicks, a former congresswoman and anti- busing activist who became a symbol of Boston's racial divide during the 1970s, has died. She was 87.

Hicks had been ill for some time, her sister-in-law, Rita Day, told The Associated Press early Wednesday. The cause of Hicks' death on Tuesday was not immediately known.

Hicks was admired even by political opponents for her daring.

"One of her virtues was courage," said William M. Bulger, who as a state senator during the 1970s opposed court-ordered desegregation in city schools. "She stood up for her point of view," he told The Boston Globe.

Hicks was already well-known locally for her racially tinged stances during a single term in Congress, several years on the City Council, two bids for mayor and service on the Boston School Committee.

In 1974, U.S. District Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ordered city schools integrated by busing in response to a lawsuit from black parents, who claimed the city had created two separate school systems, one for whites and an inferior one for blacks.

Garrity's remedy, busing students out of their neighborhoods to racially integrate schools in others, sparked violent racial conflict, particularly in the mostly white neighborhoods. The issue was seized on by Hicks.

"If the suburbs are honestly interested in solving the problems of the Negro, why don't they build subsidized housing for them?" she once asked. "Boston schools are a scapegoat for those who have failed to solve the housing, economic, and social problems of the black citizen."

Yet while she opposed court-ordered busing as a member of the School Committee in the 1960s and later on the City Council, Hicks maintained she was not racist.

"A large part of my vote probably does come from bigoted people," she once said. "The important thing is that I'm not bigoted. To me, that word means all the dreadful Southern segregationist, Jim Crow business that's always shocked and revolted me."

Opponents, like James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, called her "the Bull Connor of Boston," a reference to the police commissioner of Birmingham, Ala., who ordered fire hoses turned on civil rights demonstrators.

"She was a tragic figure," said Paul Parks, a former Boston School Committee chairman and vice president of the Boston NAACP. "She became an object of hate -- and she asked for it."

When the controversy over busing died, Hicks faded from the public eye, and she lost a bid for re-election to the City Council in 1980. It was her last race for electoral office.

Her father, William J. Day, was a prominent Boston lawyer and much of Hicks' early political success had sprung from his popularity. She earned a law degree from Boston University in 1955.

In 1961, she was elected to the Boston School Committee. She ran for mayor twice, in 1967 and 1971, the first time coming within 12,000 votes of being elected.

She was elected to the City Council in 1969, retaining the seat even when she was elected to Congress the following year. She was a member of the National Organization for Women, and while in Congress, lobbied for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

While she lost a bid for a second term in Congress, she retained her City Council seat until 1977. She was reappointed to the council to fill a vacancy in 1979-80.

Hicks is survived by her son, William D. Hicks. Funeral plans are pending.