Louise Day Hicks, icon of tumult, dies

[Khephra]

Louise Day Hicks, who came within 12,000 votes of being elected mayor of Boston in 1967 and earned a national reputation as a symbol of racial divisiveness, died yesterday. She was 87 and suffered from a variety of ailments.

snip.......

In the culture wars of the 1960s, Mrs. Hicks's supporters felt she represented them as the media and courts and academe did not.

Other elected officials refrained from asking a question she posed almost gleefully: "If the suburbs are honestly interested in solving the problems of the Negro, why don't they build subsidized housing for them?"

"Boston schools," she said, "are a scapegoat for those who have failed to solve the housing, economic, and social problems of the black citizen."

In the face of radical change and racial upheaval, she stood up for white ethnics and the traditional values they professed: home and church, neighborhood and flag. "You know where I stand" was her campaign slogan in the 1967 mayoral race. To admirers, Mrs. Hicks spoke the truth to liberal power in simple declarative sentences.

more...........

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/10/22/louise_day_hicks_icon_of_tumult_dies/

[papau]

1. When she told the black kids that they got all the education they deserved

and the kids through the garbage cans at her as she fled out the back door, it was the start of something good in Boston. The clean up is not yet complete - but the schools and attitudes are a 100 times better.

It was a joke trying to get black kids school supplies at the time. The rooms assigned to conference/guide/mentor for volunteers did not have working light bulbs at the schools I visited - and those light bulbs only went to white schools per the orders (albeit unwritten) of the School Board. It was a crazy, bad time- and she was the leader of evil.

[semass]

2. Awwwwww, "Herself" is gone...

:cry: </sarcasm>