Barbara Hicks Collins Unsung (S)hero — Making “HER story” Our Story

Please join Minding My Business in continuing the celebration of local unsung (s)heros as we highlight this giant, Barbara Hicks Collins and her family for their major contributions towards the Civil Rights Movement. Black Excellence is this family’s path and we salute them. Please be sure to visit the Robert Hicks Foundation’s website and after you read this bio, research this family. If you don’t know about their contributions towards our black history and some of our liberties we freely use today, you are doing yourself a disservice. We salute the Hicks Family!!!

BARBARA HICKS COLLINS, is a founder and executive director of the Robert ‘Bob’ Hicks Foundation.

Barbara Hicks Collins is the oldest daughter of Bogalusa civil rights leaders Robert and Valeira Hicks. In early 1965, her father Robert Hicks, was a member of the Bogalusa Civic and Voters League, who invited CORE, a national civil rights organization, to come to Bogalusa to test the city’s compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act which legally was supposed to end segregation and unequal treatment of blacks in public accommodations.

Hicks and his wife, Valeira, invited two white CORE workers to stay in their home while they were in town testing the city’s compliance. When it was found out that whites were staying at a black person’s house, the police chief and a deputy came to the Hicks House and threatened, that the two white civil rights workers were not turned over to them, a white mob would burn down the Hicks house and kill everyone inside including women and children. Hicks refused, the children including Barbara Hicks Collins were sent to safe houses and friends and neighbors were called to come over and defend the Hicks house with guns. Upon seeing the arrival of black men armed with guns and rifles, the police chief and deputy left and the mob never appeared.

Three weeks later, Hicks invited a black self-defense organization from Jonesboro, Louisiana to form a chapter of the Deacons for Defense in Bogalusa to protect civil rights activists. The newly formed Deacons for Defense in Bogalusa acquired 2-way radios which were kept in the Hicks’ breakfast room for dispatching armed Deacons to protect activists or local blacks that were in danger.

So began the civil rights movement for Barbara Hicks Collins and the Hicks family. Her father became vice president of the Bogalusa Civic and Voters League and along with President A.Z. Young and Secretary Gail Jenkins would lead the community through 4 to 6 tempestuous years.

Barbara led the first student march out of all black Central High School Central Memorial High School and Central Elementary School in 1965 protesting her still segregated school. {over 10 years after Brown v Board of Education was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court ( which ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional and that schools must be integrated with all deliberate speed)}. There were several students led marches that year and the next. Her family and friends integrated into the local segregated park during which her younger brother was bitten by a police dog and her elderly aunt was knocked unconscious by hostile whites which included many of the local white police.

Barbara participated in the picketing of many stores in Bogalusa and marched in many adults led marches, including one led by CORE president, James Farmer. She assisted the Deacons by monitoring the two-way radios and informing them of the “trouble spots” in the city. The Hicks House had 24-hour protection from the Deacons during the first years and were under strict rules for safety.

When she left to attend college in New Orleans at an HBCU, she kept in contact by phone and often returned home to participate in activities on the weekend. Her younger brother and sister, Gregory and Valeria, were part of the 2nd group to integrate into the formerly all-white Bogalusa High School and they encountered much hostility. Her father sued for the right to be a supervisor at the local papermill and box factory and became the first black supervisor at the plant.

Barbara received a B.S. in Nursing from Dillard University in New Orleans and a MSPH in health administration and policy planning from Tulane University. After working as the regional administrator for the Louisiana Family Planning Program in North Louisiana, she became the first African American Director of Nursing for the City of New Orleans Department of Health. In that role, she focused on the public health needs of children and youth of the City of New Orleans.

She is 75, married to Matthew B. Collins, Jr., and they are enormously proud of their four children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandson.

The History of the Robert “Bob” Hicks Foundation:

After surviving Hurricane Katrina, Barbara moved back to Bogalusa where she was blessed to be mentored by her father on the adult perspective of the Bogalusa civil rights movement in the years preceding his death. She, with her mother, Valeira and elder brother, Charles, founded The Robert “Bob” Hicks Foundation shortly after his passing, in order to preserve the legacy of the Bogalusa Movement and help build a better Bogalusa for the present generation and the generations that follow.

Under her direction, both of her family homes which were involved in the Bogalusa civil rights movement have been placed on the National Registry of Historic Places and free-standing plaques commemorate their inclusion.

A final plaque will be dedicated later this year by the lieutenant governor of Louisiana which celebrates the Hicks House placement on the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail. This was secured by the Foundation’s active involvement in the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail project.

The Foundation has engaged in a partial restoration of her two-family homes to convert them to Civil Rights Museums, through several small grants from the state and the local successor paper mill, volunteer work of interested citizens and two larger grants from the National Park Service.

A grant from IMLS was secured in partnership with TAAHM (an African American museum in another parish) to obtain oral histories from participants, create a digital archive louisianadigitallibrary.org/hicks of the history of civil rights in Bogalusa to be accessible worldwide, create a website www.hicksfoundation.org to access Bogalusa Civil Rights materials wherever they are maintained and produce a 12 page booklet Why Bogalusa Matters — Brochure | The Robert ‘Bob’ Hicks Foundation containing. a brief summary and highlights of the Bogalusa Civil Rights movement for use as a teaching tool.

Much work still has to be done, but I can say they are off to a great start in preserving the Hicks Family legacy in history!