Girard's first black grad returns to revisit history Charles W. Hicks entered Girard College in January 1969, a 12-year-old frightened about being one of a handful of black students to integrate the all-white boarding school. The full article will be available on the Web for a limited time: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/8654412.htm (c) 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Posted on Thu, May. 13, 2004 Girard's first black grad returns to revisit history By Martha Woodall Inquirer Staff Writer Charles W. Hicks entered Girard College in January 1969, a 12-year-old frightened about being one of a handful of black students to integrate the all-white boarding school. "We had received bomb threats and hate mail at our home," Hicks, 47, recalled yesterday. "That stigma, I thought, would follow me through the whole process." But his mother, Marie, and Cecil B. Moore, who led the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP as it fought to gain admission for black students, counseled him. "They gave me a charge - not to get into any trouble and not get kicked out," Hicks said in an interview. "That was not something I could afford to do because I was there on the shoulders of other individuals who had gone to jail for me." Twenty years after the Supreme Court's 1954 landmark school-desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education, Hicks finally became the first African American to graduate from Girard. To mark the 30th anniversary of his graduation, Hicks returned to campus yesterday as Girard prepares to open an exhibit documenting the long struggle to desegregate an unusual school created for "poor, white male orphans." "I didn't think that the gates would ever open for me to enter Girard," Hicks told Girard's 611 students during a program in the chapel. "You are the legacy of that 14-year lawsuit." The campaign to integrate Girard involved two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, more than seven months of round-the-clock picketing by civil-rights protesters, and a visit by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It's all depicted in the State Museum of Pennsylvania's exhibit, "Overcoming Barriers: The Integration of Girard College." The collaborative project of Girard and the museum made its debut in Harrisburg earlier this year. It opens to the public tomorrow in Founder's Hall at Girard College. "On a September day of 1968, four boys walked together through the gates toward Founder's Hall," Girard president Dominic M. Cermele said yesterday. "Their story is the story of Girard College, and we are privileged to share it with each other and with the larger community." Yesterday's program was a reunion for many people who had played key roles in the sometimes tumultuous effort to desegregate the school. Invited guests included lawyer William T. Coleman, a former U.S. secretary of transportation, who shepherded the winning suit through the federal courts to gain admission for several African American boys, including Hicks and his younger brother, Theodore. Marie Hicks, whom Cermele called "our own Rosa Parks," attended, as did Madie Lord, daughter of the late U.S. District Court Judge Joseph S. Lord 3d, who had ruled that Girard was subject to the Brown decision. Alexis Moore, whose father led the picketing, represented her family. Hicks told the audience that he was only 8 when the lawsuit was filed. "As I was preparing for [my] remarks, I looked back through some of my memorabilia, and I found about six or seven different letters that attorney Coleman had sent to my mom back in 1965, '67, '68 and 1969 - all those years," Hicks told the students. "And as I read them, most of them really gave me a very sad feeling because most of the letters said that I wouldn't have the opportunity to come to Girard College." Hicks briefly paused, choked up with emotion. "The last letter that I read actually said that we had won the case, and I was going to get an opportunity to come to Girard." His brother, Theodore, 9, was admitted in September 1968 with other young boys. But the court case had taken so long that Hicks was then 12, and Girard in those days did not admit students older than 10. The school made an exception, and Hicks enrolled four months later. Theodore, who graduated in 1977, was the school's first African American valedictorian. When Hicks stepped on the 43-acre campus he could not help but notice that today, African Americans make up 82 percent of the student body. The first girls were admitted in 1984, and now 54 percent of Girard's students are female. "Realize that, yes, the dynamics have changed in the faces here at Girard, but racism is still there," said Hicks, who earned an engineering degree through a dual program at Morehouse College in Atlanta and the Georgia Institute of Technology. "It is still in the world, and I'm sure it is still here. So don't be a proponent of it. Think of how I would have felt. Think of how I did feel." He urged the students to embrace their diversity and to work hard. "Girard prepared me for the future," Hicks said. "There are a lot of people who don't get the education you are getting at Girard, so you should feel lucky that this is absolutely an honor to be going to Girard College. It was an honor for me." After his talk, Hicks was mobbed by students. "I think this was a great opportunity for us because a lot of students here don't really know the history of us being in the school," said senior Latrice Jamison, 17, who will attend Pennsylvania State University. "It was good for him to come out here and show us and give us the real story." Girard also invited some veteran activists who had demonstrated outside the school's high stone walls for months. It was the first time Kenneth Salaam, 55, had passed beyond the gates to enter the campus. "I was here every day for seven months and 17 days," said Salaam, who had dropped out of Edison High School at 16 to demonstrate at Girard before joining King's civil-rights struggles in the South. "Tears came out when I walked through these doors," he said. "It is a pleasure to see these children. Because you never know until you see the fruits of your labor. To come in here and talk with the children. They are ordered to be successful. There is no other option because there is no excuse. There has been too much sacrifice." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Contact staff writer Martha Woodall at 215-854-2789 or martha.woodall@phillynews.com.