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Robert Hicks, vice president of the Bogalusa Voters League, second from left, and other demonstrators shout the Black Power chant as they pass white onlookers upon arrival at Franklinton, Louisiana on July 11, 1966, concluding a two-day march from Bogalusa.(Photo: Jack Thornell, AP)
BOGALUSA, La. -- The home of the late civil rights activist Robert "Bob'' Hicks, a leader of the Deacons of Defense in the 1960s, received a state historic marker in 2014 and was recognized on the National Register of Historic places in 2015. Now, his family is working on transforming the home into a civil rights museum.
Barbara Hicks-Collins, the activist's daughter, said the journey to making her father's home a museum started with getting a street named for her father four months after his death in 2010. Then, the family focused on getting the state historic marker and eventually getting the home placed on the park service's register.
"We're one step closer to completely honoring my father," Hicks-Collins said. "This is just another accomplishment along the way."
Hicks-Collins said the process has suffered minor setbacks in the last couple of months because the home has been repeatedly vandalized. She said the family would have the home re-wired and security cameras installed. A contractor informed her that the home's foundation and roof would need to be changed before the project moves forward.
Still, the family's civil rights work will be featured in an exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., which is set to open in the fall.
"My dad's work has been inspiring," said Charles Hicks, who now lives in Washington. "My dad was willing to stand up for what he believed in... to see how much people honored and valued him, makes me feel good. He had characteristics that people admired."
In July 1964, a group of men from Jonesboro, La., led by Earnest "Chilly Willy" Thomas and Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick founded the Deacons for Defense and Justice. The group was organized to protect members of the Congress of Racial Equality from Ku Klux Klan violence.
Robert Hicks, along with Charles Sims and A.Z. Young, started the first affiliate chapter in Bogalusa. The group's intense confrontations with the Klan in Bogalusa was pivotal in forcing the federal government's involvement on the behalf of the local African-American community.
The Deacons emerged as one of the first visible self-defense forces in the South and represented a new, more assertive face of the civil rights movement. The group was successful in providing protection for local African Americans who wanted to register to vote and for white and black civil rights workers in the area.
According to Tulane University professor Lance Hill's book titled "The Deacons of Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement," the group grew to several hundred members and 21 chapters in the Deep South.
The strategy and methods that the Deacons employed attracted the attention the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which in 1965 authorized an investigation into the group’s activities that lasted seven years.
Following the Watts riots in California in 1965, the Deacons began to lose notoriety as the FBI turned its attention to other groups, such as the Black Panther Party. The Deacons were extinct by 1968.
Hicks-Collins and her brother recalled atypical childhoods, with teen years filled with memories of the civil rights movement.
"We gave up our entire life," Hicks-Collins said. "The sacrifice that people made is a part of our history and that needs to be preserved."
"Those were scary times," Charles Hicks said. "We were a marked family. We couldn't just go outside and play. We made a lot of sacrifices, not only for us, but for everyone in Bogalusa."
Hicks-Collins said the City of Bogalusa issued her family and an official apology earlier in 2015 at an event held at Cassidy Park, a place of particularly poignant memories.
Robert Hicks was leading the desegregation effort at Cassidy Park in May 1965 when white men attacked women and children with clubs, belts and sticks. According to past reports, the injured activists were taken to New Orleans for medical treatment because they could not receive treatment in Bogalusa.
"I thought it was ironic that the place we held the event was the same place that symbolized a battleground during that time period," Hicks-Collins said. "It was quite emotional."
Follow Jordan Arceneaux on Twitter: @jordanarceneaux
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