Louise Day Hicks
Anna Louise Day Hicks was an American politician and lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts, best known for her staunch opposition to desegregation in Boston public schools, and especially to court-ordered busing, in the 1960s and 1970s. A longtime member of Boston's school board and city council, she served one term in the United States House of Representatives, succeeding Speaker of the House John W. McCormack.
The daughter of a wealthy and prominent attorney and judge, Hicks attended Simmons College and received her qualification as a teacher from Wheelock College. She worked as a first-grade teacher prior to marrying in 1942. After the births of her two children, Hicks returned to school and completed a Bachelor of Science degree at Boston University in 1952. In 1955, she received a JD from Boston University Law School, attained admission to the bar, and entered into partnership with her brother as the firm of Hicks and Day.
In 1960, Hicks won election to Boston's school board, where she served until 1970, including holding the position of chairwoman from 1963 to 1965. During her tenure on the school committee, she came into conflict with civil rights groups and black residents of Boston over her opposition to plans to integrate schools by busing students between districts to achieve racial balance. In addition, for 114 days in the summer of 1965, the Reverend Vernon Carter, pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church in the Southend of Boston protested in front of the school committee building in which Hicks entered and exited frequently. In 1967, she ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Boston. From 1970 to 1971, she served on the Boston City Council. In 1970, she won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House seat of the retiring John McCormack. She went on to win the general election and serve one term, 1971 to 1973. In 1971, she was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Boston. She was defeated for reelection to Congress in 1972 by Joe Moakley, a Democrat who ran as an independent.
After leaving Congress, Hicks was the head of an anti-busing group, "Restore Our Alienated Rights", which remained active until a 1976 federal court decision mandated busing to achieve integration in public schools. In 1974, Hicks returned to the Boston City Council, and she served until 1978, including holding the council president's position in 1976. She lost reelection in 1977, but was appointed to fill a vacancy in 1979. She served until 1981, and was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection. Hicks died in Boston in 2003.
Early life
Hicks was the daughter of William J. Day and Anna Day. Hicks described her father, a lawyer and an influential judge in Boston, as her "greatest influence". The child of poor Irish immigrants, William Day became one of the wealthiest men in South Boston as a result of his law practice, real estate investments and his role as director of South Boston's Mount Washington Cooperative Bank. Day was admired by Boston's Irish community; as a banker he provided assistance to families struggling to make mortgage payments and as a judge he was particularly lenient towards juvenile defendants. In her own political career, Hicks would benefit from her father's reputation.Hicks' mother died when Hicks was fourteen. In 1942, she married John Hicks, an engineer, and they had two sons, John and William. John Edward Hicks had several brushes with the law, including a prison sentence for kidnapping. He disappeared in 1978, while he was facing more than 20 charges related to a 1977 incident in which he threatened harm to several customers inside a restaurant and then attempted to run over several of them in the parking lot. John Hicks was still missing at the time of his mother's death.
Hicks studied home economics at Simmons College and then later earned a teaching certificate at Wheelock College. She taught first grade in Brookline, Massachusetts, for two years and pursued a degree in education at Boston University.
Hicks earned a Bachelor of Science degree from BU in 1952, and a JD from Boston University Law School in 1955. Hicks stated that her father's death in 1950 left her resolved to follow in his footsteps. At the time, female law students were still rare; Hicks was one of only nine women in her class of 232. Hicks formed close friendships with two other female students, one Jewish and one black, and she studied for exams with a group made up of mostly minorities. Hicks was admitted to the bar and practiced law with her brother John as the firm of Hicks and Day.
''De facto'' segregation
Hicks ran successfully for the Boston School Committee in 1961, presenting herself as a reform candidate. Her campaign slogan was "The only mother on the ballot", which was factually true, although her own children were not enrolled in any public schools. In January 1963, she became the committee chairperson and seemed likely to be endorsed by the leading reform group when, in June, the Boston chapter of the NAACP demanded "an immediate public acknowledgment of de facto segregation in the Boston public school system." At the time, 13 city schools were at least 90% black.The committee refused to acknowledge the segregation. Hicks was recognized as the holdout; within months she became Boston's most popular politician and the most controversial, requiring police bodyguards 24 hours a day. Hicks became nationally known in 1965 when she opposed court-ordered busing of students into inner-city schools to achieve integration.
From its creation under the National Housing Act of 1934 signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Federal Housing Administration used its official mortgage insurance underwriting policy explicitly to prevent school desegregation. In 1963, Boston Mayor John F. Collins and Boston Redevelopment Authority executive Edward J. Logue organized a consortium of savings banks, cooperatives, and federal and state savings and loan associations in the city called the Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group that would reverse redline parts of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan along Blue Hill Avenue during the administration of Kevin White.
Despite the passage of legislation by the 156th Massachusetts General Court banning racial discrimination or segregation in housing in 1950, as well as the issuance of Executive Order 11063 by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 requiring all federal agencies to prevent racial discrimination in all federally-funded subsidized housing in the United States, the Boston Housing Authority Board actively segregated the public housing developments in the city during the Collins administration as well, with BHA departments engaging in bureaucratic resistance against integration through at least 1966 and the Board retaining control over tenant assignment until 1968.
On April 1, 1965, a special committee appointed by Massachusetts Education Commissioner Owen Kiernan released its final report finding that more than half of black students enrolled in Boston Public Schools attended institutions with enrollments that were at least 80% black and that housing segregation in the city had caused the racial imbalance. Massachusetts Governor John Volpe filed a request for legislation from the state legislature that defined schools with nonwhite enrollments greater than 50 percent to be imbalanced and granted the State Board of Education the power to withhold state funds from any school district in the state that was found to have racial imbalance, which Volpe would sign into law the following August.
By refusing to admit that segregation existed in city schools and by declaring that children were the "pawns" of racial politics, she came to personify the discord that existed between some working class Irish Americans and African Americans. "Boston schools are a scapegoat for those who have failed to solve the housing, economic, and social problems of the black citizen", Hicks said. She asserted that, while thirteen Boston schools were at least 90% black, Chinatown schools were 100% Chinese, the North End had schools that were 100% Italian American, and South Boston contained schools that were mostly Irish American. The Boston public schools included a conglomerate of white ethnics with very few WASPs.
Following the passage of the Racial Imbalance Act, Governor Volpe, Mayor Collins, and BPS Superintendent William H. Ohrenberger, opposed and warned the Boston School Committee that a vote that they held that same month to abandon a proposal to bus several hundred blacks students from Roxbury and North Dorchester from three overcrowded schools to nearby schools in Dorchester and Brighton, and purchase an abandoned Hebrew school in Dorchester to relieve the overcrowding instead, could now be held by a court to be deliberate acts of segregation. Pursuant to the Racial Imbalance Act, the state conducted a racial census and found 55 imbalanced schools in the state with 46 in Boston, and in October 1965, the State Board required the School Committee to submit a desegregation plan, which the School Committee did the following December.
In April 1966, the State Board found the plan inadequate and voted to rescind state aid to the district, and in response, the School Committee filed a lawsuit against the State Board challenging both the decision and the constitutionality of the Racial Imbalance Act the following August. In January 1967, Massachusetts Superior Court overturned a Suffolk Superior Court ruling that the State Board had improperly withdrawn the funds and ordered the School Committee to submit an acceptable plan to the State Board within 90 days or else permanently lose funding, which the School Committee did shortly thereafter and the State Board accepted. In June 1967, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the constitutionality of the Racial Imbalance Act and the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren declined to hear the School Committee's appeal in January 1968.