Saturday, December 13, 2008

Anna Louise Day Hicks biography

Anna Louise Day Hicks was born on October 16, 1916. She was an Irish-American, who was an American Politician and a lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts. With a Catholic upbringing, she was elected to the Boston School Committee in 1961 and in January two years later was made the chairperson. In June of that year, the NAACP of Boston were outraged by the obvious ignoring of the order for schools in the United States to be desegregated by the Boston school system. During this time there were 13 city schools that were almost 100% black. During this time, Hicks gained immense popularity as a politician as being opposed to the desegregation. But because she was so controversial, she needed bodyguards all day, every day. In 1967 she ran for mayor of Boston and lost by 12,000 votes. 
She first gained her fame in 1965 by being against the court-ordered busing of students into the mostly black inner city schools to successfully achieve integration. 

"Boston schools are a scapegoat for those who have failed to solve the housing, economic, and social problems of the black citizen." -Anna Louise Day Hicks.

In 1975 a federal judge ordered Boston schools to expand their busing programs to comply with the 1971 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education decision. Hicks started a group called Restore Our Alienated Rights that participated in massive resistance to the desegregation. She was also the first woman president of the Boston City Council. 

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