Helena Hicks, civil rights crusader who countered segregation with sit-ins, dies at 88

Lynne Wilson was about 12 years old when she began to understand her mother’s determination. In 1963, her father attempted to stop her mom mother from going to the March on Washington by locking all of her mom’s shoes in the trunk of his car, Wilson said.

But that didn’t stop Helena Hicks. She walked up her block in Northwest Baltimore to borrow shoes from a friend so she could join the march, Wilson recalled. The memory reminds her of how committed Hicks was as a civil rights activist.

“Her main goal in life was just to make sure that everyone was equal and treated equally. Black, white, male, female — she just believed in equality. She lived her life trying to right wrongs and injustices,” Wilson said.

Hicks died of pneumonia and complications of Lewy body dementia at age 88 on April 18.

She Hicks was widely known as a lead organizer of Morgan State University students who participated in lunch- counter sit-ins at Read’s Drug Stores in Baltimore in 1955. The Read’s sit-ins, though they did not gain the same national attention as sit-ins at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, were among the first successful student-led protests to desegregate lunch counters.

“If you live in Baltimore and know your history, the Read’s Drugstore sit-ins are considered the forerunner to what later happened, with greater publicity, elsewhere in the South,” said E.R. Shipp, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and Morgan State professor, in a 2016 Baltimore Mmagazine article.

Barnum said she was always in “awe” of Hicks for her political activism and furthering her education in a way that would benefit others and being politically active.

Hicks obtained her master’s in Ppublic Wwelfare and Ppsychiatric Ccounseling from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and her doctorate in pPublic Ppolicy from the University of Maryland, in College Park.

“I’d go to class, then to a sit-in and then come back late at night to study or edit the newspaper,” Hicks previously said to Baltimore Mmagazine.

Hicks went on to work at Baltimore’s Department of Public Welfare, which is now known as the city’s Department of Human Services agency. She later worked for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City and retired as a director in Baltimore’s Department of Human Resources.

Her civil rights advocacy never stopped, Wayne Hicks said. “My mother, she was always fighting for something. So she, she loved it. You know, she thrived on it,” he said.

One day, shortly after Helena had a triple bypass surgery in ???, she couldn’t be found anywhere at her home while recovering. Her family would eventually find out that she had been speaking out at a Baltimore City Hall hearing the entire day. That was the type of fight she had, Wayne explained.

He will always remember walking and driving through the city with his mother, saying it seemed like she knew the history of every single square foot of Baltimore.

He will always remember walking and driving through the city with Helena or taking her places she would ne tell me things about the history seemed like every single square foot of Baltimore she knew the history of it, he added.

Wilson, her eldest daughter, said Hicks always emphasized the importance of the past to understand the future.

“She was a person who cared about not forgetting history and was passionate about taking a stand against injustices so that they wouldn’t repeat themselves,” Wilson said. “People should remember that she [Helena] always spoke to be heard. She was relentless in her pursuit for the betterment of others.”

A public viewing will held at Joseph H. Brown Funeral Home, located at 2140 N. Fulton Ave., on Monday, May 6, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. The funeral is Tuesday, May 7 at 10:30 a.m., at the same location.