Title:Oral History Interview with Richard Hicks, February 1, 1991.
Interview M-0023. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007):
Electronic Edition.
Author:
Hicks, Richard,
interviewee
Interview conducted by
Wells, Goldie F.
Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the
electronic publication of this interview.
Text encoded by
Jennifer Joyner
Sound recordings digitized by
Aaron Smithers
Southern Folklife Collection
First edition, 2007
Size of electronic edition: 76 Kb
Publisher: The University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
2007.
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
Languages used in the text:
English
Revision history:
2007-00-00, Celine Noel, Wanda Gunther, and Kristin Martin revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic
edition.
2007-07-10, Jennifer Joyner finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
Source(s):
Title of recording: Oral History Interview with Richard Hicks, February
1, 1991. Interview M-0023. Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007)
Title of series: Series M. Black High School Principals. Southern Oral
History Program Collection (M-0023)
Author: Goldie F. Wells
Title of transcript: Oral History Interview with Richard Hicks, February
1, 1991. Interview M-0023. Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007)
Title of series: Series M. Black High School Principals. Southern Oral
History Program Collection (M-0023)
Author: Richard Hicks
Description: 83.9 Mb
Description: 13 p.
Note:
Interview conducted on February 1, 1991, by Goldie F.
Wells; recorded in Durham, North Carolina.
Note:
Transcribed by Unknown.
Note:
Forms part of: Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Series M. Black High School Principals, Manuscripts Department,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Note:
Original transcript on deposit at the Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
Editorial practices An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition. The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original. The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in
Libraries Guidelines. Original grammar and spelling have been preserved. All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity
references. All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " All em dashes are encoded as —
Interview with Richard Hicks, February 1, 1991. Interview M-0023.
Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Hicks, Richard,
interviewee
Interview Participants
RICHARD
HICKS, interviewee
GOLDIE F.
WELLS, interviewer
[TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Page 1
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
I am in the office of Mr. Richard Hicks at Hillside High School in
Durham, North Carolina. Mr. Hicks, I would like for you to introduce
yourself and say that you know that this interview is being
recorded.
RICHARD HICKS:
My name is Richard Hicks, principal of Hillside High School and I am
aware of the recording of this interview.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Well, Mr. Hicks, I wrote to you and I appreciate you answering my
questionnaire. I am doing some research. I am comparing the roles of
black high school principals and interviewing principals from 1964, and
1989. In 1964, there were over 200 black high school principals and in
1989, when I wrote to the state department they sent me a listing of 41.
I found that of those 41 some of them are principals of alternative
schools and so we had less than 40 black high school principals in the
year '89. So you are one of the '89 principals. I want to ask you some
questions and have you respond to them for the research. First thing I
want you to tell me is how you became a high school principal.
RICHARD HICKS:
I was teaching in Winston-Salem, North Carolina at a junior-senior high
school and was beckoned back to Rocky Mount to coach at my former
all-black high school. Within two years we had merged with the white
school in integration. For about three years I taught in that integrated
situation and became an assistant principal of that merged high school.
I stayed an assistant principal for two years and the third year the
superintendent gave me an opportunity to move into a junior high school
as a principal in that he was bringing the principal of that school to
his office as director of a Title I or Title II program at that time.
And so I moved into the principalship. I was working on my Master's
degree in administration at that time but the superintendent gave me a
year to complete my certificate but after he gave me the job I completed
it in one semester and a summer of that same year.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
So you stayed down in the Rocky Mount area for…
RICHARD HICKS:
I stayed in Rocky Mount until the year 1981, and I felt like I needed a
change so I moved to Orange County where I became principal of Stanford
Junior High School. It was a school with about 1140 pupils with a
population about 77% white and 23% black. I had originally applied for
the high school job which was open in that same system but after talking
to the superintendent he felt that he should move the young man who was
principal at the middle school to the high school but said that he would
be happy to offer me the junior high which I took. I stayed in the
junior high school position for six years and Hillside became available
when one
Page 2
of our best principals, a black principal
that North Carolina has known, Dr. John Lucas, retired. I was given the
opportunity to follow him as principal here at Hillside.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
And you have been here at Hillside for the past five years.
Did you have any educators in your family?
RICHARD HICKS:
No, I am the first person in my family to go beyond high school and only
my younger brother is a high school graduate. My other three sisters
and/or brothers, none of them got beyond the 10th grade.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
I want you to tell me something about Hillside High School.
RICHARD HICKS:
First of all it has a magnificent faculty. That is the most impressive
thing. They are people who know what they are doing, who are interested
in going back to school and finding out new techniques and what have
you. Right now Durham City Schools is getting a lot of publicity as not
being up to par as it relates to the mandates of the state but this
staff has put together a very good school improvement plan and are
working feverishly to make sure that it comes about. In the third year
of the plan in which the state has mandated, I can guarantee that this
faculty will meet at 75% of the indicators of success.
As it relates to the students here we do not have a Caucasian or a person
of any other race in this school other than blacks. There are 976 kids
here at this time and they are all black students. However, about 30% of
our staff is composed of Caucasian teachers or of another minority.
However, we have found that that has in no way deterred the teachers or
students interest in making this one of the best high schools
around.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
How do you maintain the total black student population?
RICHARD HICKS:
It is just a matter that--I guess it was like it occurred in many cities
that Caucasians chose to move from the inter-city areas and move to the
suburbs and as they moved to the suburbs in the county school systems
they began to build bigger and in some cases better facilities in their
high schools. So what has happened over the last eight or nine years is
that there has been a continuous flow so that those Caucasian families
who still live within the school district, there children are grown and
have children of their own and the city and county of Durham have not
seen fit over the years to move the city school district line along with
the movement of the suburbs. So there are many people who live in the
city of Durham but are in the county school district because the school
district line has not changed.
Page 3
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
And you are located near North Carolina Central University.
RICHARD HICKS:
An excellent place to be. One block away.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Yes, you can look right over to the campus. Now I am going to ask you
some questions about the responsibilities that you have here as
principal and how you deal with them. Would you address the supervision
of personnel in your teacher selection.
RICHARD HICKS:
Well, let me take supervision first of all. The state gives us a very
good guide as to how to supervise teachers. One of the first things that
we do when we come to school is in my handbook there is a list of
persons who will evaluate each teacher. I've been fortunate up until
this year to have three assistant principals so we would divide the
faculty into four equal groups. I would normally take the non-teaching
personnel because I would be aware of their movements and what have you
and then we would simply follow the plan where we would give them one
formal observation during the year and several informal observations,
have the post-conferences, the pre-conferences and follow that gamut in
terms of supervision. Each teacher is told at that meeting that if there
is something of their evaluation with which they want to discuss they
have a right to ask the person to whom I have delegated that
responsibility to have me in on the conference. The other thing is that
any teacher once they see the list they can request to be observed by
their immediate supervisor by law, that meaning me if they wish. But
that doesn't happen too often once they are assigned. As to the
selection of teachers, we have a system here where once the vacancy is
defined the director of personnel will have the supervisor at central
office to screen the applications and once the applications are
screened--we can choose six of the screened applicants and call them in
for interviews. We don't have to interview all of the six but we may do
that. If we don't know anyone in that group of six, we can give them
back and ask for six additional ones. There is a form that we feel out
where we have to rate each of the persons that we interview. I have had
no problems in the selection of teachers here at Hillside. The executive
director of instruction has always wanted the teachers who came to
Hillside to be people whom I felt would fit in and suit our needs.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
So you do take a lot of pains in selecting those--out of the six you are
very selective of the ones because of your situation here.
RICHARD HICKS:
Very much so. And then once I select them if it is a time when teachers
are available, I let the chairmen of the departments sit with me and an
assistant principal during the interview.
Page 4
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Are your recommendations usually adhered to?
RICHARD HICKS:
I have never had one since coming to Durham City that I have submitted
that was not accepted by the board.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Curriculum and instruction.
RICHARD HICKS:
Once again, that proposes no problem because I think the General Assembly
made it very clear that there was a standard course of study for the
state of North Carolina. If you will look here on my desk right now,
what I have now is that teachers must pass onto me. They have ten days
into this second semester. They must present a chart to me for the
months of February, March, April and May on it and they have to go in
and we have a scope and sequence chart, they have to go into that scope
and sequence chart and let me know what outcomes that they have not
already covered this school year and they must tell me what month they
are going to cover them in for the rest of this school year. This will
be given to my assistant principals and myself and when we go into the
classroom for observations, if you are not within that sequence in the
month that you told us then we need to sit down and talk. So from the
curriculum standpoint we have the basic course of study, we have a scope
and sequence that has been put together by teachers last summer along
with our executive director of instruction and the implementation is up
to me as a principal. I think we are right on target with that.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
And you do see yourself as an instructional leader?
RICHARD HICKS:
The day that principals are not instructional leaders within the school,
I plan to retire.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Discipline.
RICHARD HICKS:
Once again, that is something that you have to get and then go on from
there. One cannot let discipline consume the entire school day, the
entire nine weeks, semester, or school year. And what has happened here
at Hillside we did have some discipline problems here when we first
arrived but this staff has gotten together and now we don't have
situations where kids are afraid to go in the restrooms or kids afraid
to walk from one classroom area to another. We have a specific
discipline policy. Kids know what is going to happen to them if they are
late for school; they know what is going to happen to them if they are
on the hall without passes; they know what is going to happen to them if
they caught with matches or a cigarette lighters in their pockets; all
of that is in writing to them and that is discussed with them by me the
first thirty minutes that this student body is together any school year.
That is the first thing that they hear because we begin discipline the
moment that we walk out of the auditorium to begin our school year.
Page 5
The other part of that is that we have gone another
step here at Hillside and we have a student mediation program here that
we started two years ago. In that student mediation program we have
trained 28 students and when there is a confrontation that does not
require being sent home and if it happened in the community overnight or
on the weekend, mediation can occur by being referred by your classmates
or teachers, Reverand from your church or what have you, and we put the
parties involved in a room with the student mediators and we have an
adult who will sit on the outside of that room but does not enter into
the mediation. These student mediators who have been trained will
present to me at the mediation a report. If it is solved, then they are
allowed to go on to their classes without any administrative
interference. If it is not solved, then the administrators get into it
and 97% of our cases that have gone to mediation since we started two
years ago have ended in non-administrative interference.
This particular year it has grown so that the Mental Health Center with
whom we began it, we now have an on-site person who is available to us
now at all times although we do share it now with the other high school
who is trying to develop a program like ours at this time. So that is
how we discipline.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
That is interesting. That gives the students more ownership into their
own--taking responsibility for their own behavior.
RICHARD HICKS:
I haven't had to deal with boyfriend, girlfriend, kind of a thing in two
years.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
In high school, that does get to be a real problem.
Transportation.
RICHARD HICKS:
Once again, I don't have a problem with that either because we only have
four buses. Hillside is situated in a neighborhood-like situation and it
only takes four buses to transport our kids. The way we handle that
however is that I have a person, who is a male in this case, assigned to
each bus and in the afternoon that person is at that bus to make sure
that they get on and we send those buses on.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Utilization of funds.
RICHARD HICKS:
It depends on where the funds are coming from. In Durham we get several
kinds of funds. If they are local funds, we usually have to deal with
the supervisor of whatever particular area in which you want to speak;
science for instance. I get a mathematics allotment and I get a general
science allotment. And what I do about the local situation is that I
give the allotment to the department chairperson. People in that
department must submit the purchase order to the department chairman. If
the
Page 6
department chairman says no, then you work it
out in the department. If he or she says yes, it is then sent on to my
media center and the purchase orders are typed by the media coordinator.
The reason for that is and their job is that if they have same order for
English, math, science and social studies and they cut out three of
them, if they can figure out a way that all four of these groups can use
that material and we have been able to make our monies go further by
having that kind of screening then when it gets to me I sign so that it
can be ordered.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Cafeteria management.
RICHARD HICKS:
That is something that we all share in. The three assistant principals
during the lunch time make sure that we are roving and right now I have
it set up, where when there are classes in one whole section of our
building there are none in the other. So that gives us a small area that
we have to handle. Teachers are on duty in the cafeteria in times of
twenty minutes. A teacher has fifty-five minutes for lunch. The teacher
either gives us the first twenty minutes of that lunch period or the
last twenty minutes of that lunch period on cafeteria duty. And then one
of us is still moving through there. Then since each teacher has a
fifty-five minute planning period we don't feel like we are asking too
much to take twenty of the fifty-five minute lunch period to ask them to
help us supervise. Now we not only have the teachers in the cafeteria
but they are spread throughout the building for the first and last
twenty minutes. Everybody, including the principal, serves duty at the
school.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
But you have a cafeteria manager. Is this centrally controlled--the child
nutrition department? You really don't have anything to do with the
actual funds or selecting the cafeteria manager, do you?
RICHARD HICKS:
Yes, I just happen to have one who has been here with me but when it is
time to hire a new manager for that cafeteria I am going to be involved.
Now I'm not saying that I am going to hire the person, but I am going to
have some input in terms of the interview process and being able to say
whether or not I think the person will suit our needs. I am not silly
enough to say that I will make the final selection because the law
states that the principal can only recommend but certainly I would be
allowed to participate in that recommendation process.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
You seem to feel strongly about that. Do you feel that this should be the
administrator's role to select people that he or she has to
supervise?
RICHARD HICKS:
I have to definitely agree with that. The other part of it is that when
it comes down to the "inth" degree,
Page 7
a person at
central office is not responsible in that building. Now, I don't bother
the person who coordinates nutrition. I think it is all right for her to
supervise other people in terms of ordering food and developing their
work schedule and that kind of thing but I think I should have something
to say about when the line opens, when to close; I think they are the
experts, they ought to know what kind of food they ought to have and
what portion but when it comes down to the practical kinds of things
then I want some kind of control. Fortunately I have that kind of
relationship with Mrs. Lawson who works our program. We feel so good
about being involved that last year our sales in the cafeteria showed a
300% increase and we are the top money-making cafeteria in the system
and the system made enough money last year that Mrs. Lawson had been
able to hire an assistant and is able to pay her from local funds from
monies generated from our nutritional programs.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Do you have a lot of children on free lunch?
RICHARD HICKS:
Not really. Do you know that we didn't qualify year before last with the
15% quota for people to get Federal refunds for having taught in that
kind of situation.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
And you know that that is unbelievable and that kind of goes against what
everybody believes about a typically black high school.
RICHARD HICKS:
When you look at this school in the last school year we had about 208
seniors and we have generated $1.8 million dollars in scholarships for
that size. The other day I got my report back from the state of North
Carolina and 100% of the students who enrolled in college from Hillside
had met the state guidelines for entrance. So these are things that we
don't ever see in the newspaper about Hillside High School. Also the
state average, if I remember correctly for all students who enter a
state school, is something like 84% of them have all of the requirements
to enter and when I look at that and we had eighty-some percent of the
all of the students who even applied to school went to school at
Hillside.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
What percent of the class applied for college? Do you remember?
RICHARD HICKS:
I don't remember exactly what that figure was but the long number was 148
out of 208 actually applied.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
That is remarkable. Well, it's kind of getting off of it a little bit but
do you think that your having such a large number of blacks, do you
think having the 70% of black teachers has anything to do with the
success of the children?
Page 8
RICHARD HICKS:
I'm going to give you an answer to that question about the 70% black
teachers probably being a strong force toward realizing what we need to.
I'm going to have to say that it is good to have that kind of ratio in
the situation that we have but it is not necessary for that to exist in
order for success to occur. The reason that I have got to say that is
that you must remember that I have been principal of two fully
integrated schools. When I left Parker Junior High School down in Rocky
Mount I had a staff that was about 65% white and 45% black and we were
at or above the state level in terms of scores every year that I was
there. I left there and went to a junior high school in Hillsboro where
it was 77% white and 23% black in terms of teaching and we had the same
kind of thing occurring. We were a center for English Teacher of
Excellence and that kind of thing. I think the key however, is having
people who are sensitive to the needs of students and if you have any
kind of combination regardless of the color of the skin who will be
sensitive to the needs of that child, you can get the job done. It just
means that we are in a situation here where we are 70% black and I think
we are in a position to get the job done with that kind of a ratio.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
In your other two schools, what was the ratio of black students?
RICHARD HICKS:
Just opposite of what it is here at Hillside. Most of the time there were
about 30% or 33% black in one situation and about 40% to 45% black in
another situation.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
I know that this is one thing that is a little bit different too. When
you talk about discipline it does not seem to be a real big problem here
and when I talk to the principals of 1964, they didn't have a discipline
problem. They said it was because of the strong teachers that they had.
I am just wondering if this is the reason that it is really not a big
problem here.
RICHARD HICKS:
Strong teachers and teachers who are willing to cooperate. You see
discipline just oozes from one door to the next, from one hallway to the
next, and our teachers here at Hillside, they don't mind telling you to
"stop that" if they don't teach you. What had happened in a lot of
schools is the feeling that if I don't teach you I am not going to say
anything to you. You aren't mine. Well, when we became a staff here that
is one of the things that I asked this faculty to do and that was for us
to cooperate and that any success that we had everybody would always
know that it would be they who were the ones who made it come
happen.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Community relations. How does Hillside relate to the community?
Page 9
RICHARD HICKS:
When I came here three years ago we were playing all of our basketball
games down here in our little gymnasium. We went to North Carolina
Central to talk with Chris Fisher, the director of athletics and we have
only played one home basketball in our gym in three years. Central
opened up their facility to us and they don't charge us anything for
coming over there. We have had kids who have gone to Central to sit in
their geometry classes. We get a chance to walk over and see all of
their art displays, their drama presentations, we can walk over during
the day. That is the college community. The rest of the community here--
we have a Hillside Family Day that is coordinated by one of my assistant
principals and we do that the Saturday before school opens every year.
That has gone tremendously well. We usually get 200-300 parents over
here and have a workshop and have a big picnic down on our football
field and make a good half day of it. If you want to talk about the
business community, two years ago Galaxso gave me $15,000 to do a
project on the SAT. We took 55 kids through an SAT Program from August
to the last week in October and they took the test the first week in
November. Thirty-three of those people were upper classmen and the
others were under classmen. We saw 150-200 points of increased SAT
scores on the upper classmen that took that test and the kids who were
sophomores, we saw a tremendous job they had done on the PSAT. That is
the kind of support that we get from the business community. I must also
mention that we have a mentor program that is run by Mr. Lee and just
yesterday I got a letter from Galaxso indicating that they were giving
Mr. Lee $500 on behalf of one their volunteers who acts as a role model
father. I must also mention that what we ask these role models to do--do
not take them to lunch, do not take them to ball games. We want them to
come in here and talk with them about their jobs and how they make
money, and then take them on their jobs and let them spend an hour or
two hours a week or every two weeks or a month to show them an
environment in which one can make money and not be afraid of the police
coming and arresting them for making the money. That is the objective of
this mentor program that we have.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
How many students do you have enrolled in that program?
RICHARD HICKS:
We have 40.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
How much administrative power and control do you think that you have over
your school site and your responsibilities?
RICHARD HICKS:
All that I need to get the job done and to me power and control is not a
primary thing with me. For instance, we talked about the department
chairpersons being allowed to say how monies will eventually be spent in
their department. I don't want that power. I want them to be
Page 10
happy about how they spent the money. When
teachers go to their association meetings, teachers at Hillside when
they start arguing that they don't know where the monies went in their
school, my teachers have to sit back and not play a role because they
know where their money is going. So I have enough power and control here
to do what needs to be done for these children.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
How did the desegregation of schools affect your role as a principal?
RICHARD HICKS:
It hasn't affected mine at all and I know being a minority I have always
felt that I do the best job that I can do in any situation and I don't
know of a whole lot of people who can do a better job than I can do in a
situation. So it didn't make any difference with me as it doesn't make
any difference with me now whether I am working for Durham City or
Durham County in a merger. Our emphasis should be on children and I have
trained myself to work with other people to make sure that children
benefit. That is my answer to desegregation.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
All right. Did you find any difference in supervising black teachers and
white teachers?
RICHARD HICKS:
I don't let myself do that because you remember I said I try to stick
with their evaluation instrument and there are eight functions on that
instrument. Now as long as you are carrying out those eight functions, I
don't care whether you like me or not and I really don't care a whole
lot about vice versa and I am not going to use or like or dislike you
when I get ready to do your evaluation. There are some teachers in this
building whom I know feel that I am overly stern, that I may treat this
person different from that person, but you won't find but a very small
percentage who will say that they have been evaluated unfairly.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
So you are fair.
RICHARD HICKS:
I think I am!
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Do you enjoy your job? Why?
RICHARD HICKS:
First of all, I do enjoy my job. I can't think of anything else that I
would want to be. I was a young coach in this state that had the--the
world could have opened up for me in terms of jobs. I was fortunate
enough to coach a kid named Phil Ford who was the '76 Olympian and who
is now the assistant basketball coach at the University of North
Carolina. I had DeVillian who is now a big star in the NBA and was on my
junior varsity squad, but that is the time that I got out of coaching
and came into administration because this is what I want to do. I love
being around children. I have only missed three of any kind of activity
here at
Page 11
Hillside in the three years that I have
been here. I have been to every football, basketball game, every
concert, every drama presentation; I just love my job and I have done
this anywhere that I have been. I think there is a place for black
males, those few of us who are not in prison now. There is a place for
us to be in a positive way in America and that is why I love my job.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
What do you consider the major problem of your principalship?
RICHARD HICKS:
Probably me.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Why would you say that?
RICHARD HICKS:
Not anticipating something and allowing things that may cause progress
not to occur. To give you an example, you know site-based management is
one of the prevalent ideas floating around now. And although you may
think that you are allowing your staff to do this or do that one of my
objectives this year was to hold back and not speak out so quickly to
give other people an opportunity to say and do things. So that is why I
say I'm probably my biggest problem but I hope that I am cognizant of
that and develop techniques so that I won't be my biggest enemy.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
What do you consider the most rewarding about your principalship?
RICHARD HICKS:
It's hard to say because when I get a letter like I did the other day
that said we have two candidates who are finalists for the Teacher
Scholarship at the end of the year and I well know that once you become
a finalist because there are so few now, those two kids are going to get
a scholarship Then I feel so good when an athlete and coach walks in
here and says we have a $70,000 scholarship for your athlete for four
years. I feel good then. I feel good on days when we have our academic
awards assembly and see those kids come up and get their trophies or
awards for making the honor roll. So I just have so many joys in being
principal that I can't pick out one. Also, this is not a joy of my
teaching position but I am adequately paid. Teachers have a way to go.
But as I look back over my 29 year career, my pay has followed my career
ladder. I made more when I left the classroom and became an assistant
principal and a coach, I made more when I became a junior high school
principal, I made more when I moved from a smaller junior high to a
larger junior high, and I have made more when I moved from the junior
high to the high school. So it is rewarding and I enjoy that part of it
because I feel when I go home at night that when I give a day's work, I
am paid well.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Since there are so few high school principals, if you knew of a black
young woman or young man that aspired to
Page 12
be a high
school principal, what advice would you give them?
RICHARD HICKS:
Be certified and qualify and make sure that you present yourself that way
in all professional situations. What I do here at Hillside is that I
have a young man on the staff who has his certification. Any time that I
have an assistant principal who is going to be out to conferences for
three days or more I hire a substitute and put him in this young man's
classroom. I bring him down here with me to perform those tasks so that
when he goes for an interview he can say, I have had hands-on kind of
things. I just don't try to run this place by myself or with the other
assistant principal when that occurred so that is some advice I am
giving to them and then the teachers, be it he or she, gets to know what
teachers say about him/her when he moves out of that role of the
classroom and have to get on these kids who walk the hall or come in the
cafeteria. But the best advice is to be certified and qualified and know
that you can't rap in the [unknown], you can't use English
that is colloquial and then expect people to be looking at you as a
possible candidate for a principalship. I still think black males have
to have a certain uniqueness about them in 1990, in order for a
superintendent to place them in an integrated situation.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Do you think that there must be a sponsor "someone of the other culture
that affirms your ability"? You know that you can do it and you know
that you do it very well but to save a position in an integrated
situation, do you think you need a sponsor?
RICHARD HICKS:
Let me say this. There are so few blacks, male or female in the positions
where the selections are made that on the surface one would have to say
yes to your question. But I certainly would hope that if I were to go
for a job now that it wouldn't take that but just the collective
observations of the group. It would be hard not to feel that way since
so many other persons making those decisions are of the other
culture.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Well, I have come to the end of my interview guide. If you have some
words of wisdom, you can give them.
RICHARD HICKS:
No, I don't have any words of wisdom. I'll just work today and I'll take
the weekend off and come back Monday and give it another shot.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
Well, I can just tell from looking around that you are a sportsman. I can
tell that a lot of people think highly of you with all of these plaques
on the wall and you have had a lot of accomplishments. I can tell that
you like to read from the collection of books and I can tell that you
are sincere about what you do. Just the fact that you are still going to
the classroom to teach if you have and you get in the trenches to see
that the job is done. I think that
Page 13
the children
here at Hillside are fortunate to have a principal like you. I have
learned since I started these interviews that the 25 year span between
the old administrators and you that are here working in this time but
you still have the same, I call it, stuff in you. I've come to believe
that an administrator is an administrator and has certain
characteristics and being black myself I know that there is a place for
us in education and I think that strong administrators like you are what
we need in our schools so that we can save our children. I appreciate
you taking the time.
RICHARD HICKS:
If I can be spoken of in the same breath as Dr. Lucas who was here, when
I am gone away, I'll be happy. I saw him as a boy come in here to play
basketball and I saw him as a young man as I came here coaching. I came
against his coaches and I came here and followed him as principal. We
had some good black male role models for those of us who wanted to be
principals in any era. We have had some real good role models.
GOLDIE F. WELLS:
I think that is what we are missing. That is why I think when we deal
with teachers and how many we have. I think one of the things missing is
the role models and we have been fortunate because I graduated just a
year after you did and we had role models and so I think that is what
some of our children really do need. Thank you so much for taking the
time.