Trailblazing Teacher Honored For Breaking Down Racial Barriers
(CBS) – Holy Name Cathedral was jumping Friday, as some 500 school kids from across the Chicago Archdiocese gathered to celebrate Black History Month.
And then they met a living example of black history: Bobbie Hicks. She was the first African-American lay teacher hired by the archdiocese, in 1951.
"You talk about African-American heritage. Miss Hicks is African-American heritage," Catholic Schools Chief Jim Rigg told the audience.
Hicks, honored with the archdiocese's Black Heritage Award, offered this advice to today's students: "Whatever you plan to do with your life, listen to your teacher."
Hicks, 92, taught at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1950s to her mostly Latino students at St. Procopius School.
"I did teach them the black national anthem. So, we sang 'Lift Every Voice and Sing,'" she recalls.
Her greatest joy as a teacher, she says, was seeing the reaction on her students' faces when they took joy in learning something.
"It made me feel that I had done my job, and sometimes I would say, 'By George, I think you've got it,'" Hicks says.
Bobbie Hicks is also a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother and a great-great-grandmother. In addition, she's a poet and the author of two books.