Louise Day Hicks In Conversation With Chris Wallace

Right now Representative Louise day Hicks in conversation with Chris Wallace. City Hall reporter of The Boston Globe. Mrs. Hicks you have had a remarkable hold on the political consciousness of Boston over the last decade in your campaign for school committee in 1967 for mayor and last year in the Ninth Congressional District. Time and again you have been the central issue. People have voted for you or against you but you have always been what they were voting about. Why is it that you have been able to stir up such devotion and fear in this city. I don't know. Maybe it's because I know the problems of the people that I relate well to that I'm one of them that when I speak I speak for them possibly that people are looking everywhere for their own voices to be heard and they feel that their voices will be heard when they elect Louise day Hicks to a particular position. Maybe that's the answer. Well one of the things that people talk about is the enormous interest in the neighborhood Severinsen neighborhood separateness in the city. People said you weren't against blacks you were for whites and that you know you know the neighborhood schools

for neighborhood children. WHAT WHY IS THERE SUCH A particular in a place like South Boston such a concern about neighborhood schools not only in South Boston that it's all over the city that every mother wants a child to go to the neighborhood school. This has been shown time and time again. And I think in the years to come that you'll see it even more vividly that black mothers want their children in the neighborhood school. White Now this one neighborhood school. It isn't a question of separation. It's the fact of the closeness to make the school pad of their lives. This is what people want is their own. In general the clannishness about a place like South Boston is there a very distinct feeling about South Boston as opposed to the rest of the city. You know you you say. Southie is my hometown. I think that people feel very close to each other just the same way they do in East Boston the child's down this is something that has grown over a period of many many years in fact.

Even when people move out of South Boston they always say you know I lived in South Boston is that very closeness of people to them when you're talking about opposition to busing you're in effect saying that South Bostonian would have objected to East Boston people coming in as much as anybody else and not objecting to anyone coming in there only objecting to their children being sent out. You would they wouldn't have minded let's leave Roxburgh children come in too. Do you realize that during the whole tumult about this testing program that in South Boston we had more children from Roxbury than any other pad of the city. There were no problems with concerning them. It's just that the people in South Boston or East Boston want their children to remain in their own schools. They don't care who comes into this schools because we you know we have open state enrollment. And any child is entitled to a seat in any school in the city if the seats available. You were elected to the school committee in 1961 as a moderate reform candidate and as late as June of 1963 you told a group of NWP leaders and I quote

ghetto living presents problems to the Negro family and to the negro child which necessitate a total community effort to overcome and eradicate. We must take the lead in recognizing the social revolution taking place across this nation for negro equality. Want to stop talking like that. I have never stopped talking like that I believe that today as much as I believed it then and I feel that children who live in the ghetto and they can be either black or white children that they need very special education. And in fact that teaches they've refused to raise in 1963 to put through the compensatory programs. And if you'll check the record you'll find that it was most in the compensatory programs were introduced into the schools in the ghetto because I felt these children didn't need the same education as children out sad but rather they needed more. And we wanted to give it to them. Now many children who are black do not need can have satori education. So it isn't a racial question but rather a socio economic question that we're presell with.

Well you know some people say and you know you've heard these criticisms that compensatory education is condescending or patronizing or is just a code word for bigotry and that. Well for instance the Brown versus Board of Education the Supreme Court ruling that stopped. We're gated schools so that separate is inherently unequal in schools. What do you think of that we don't have segregated schools in Boston. The pattern is an integrated school system. I admit we don't have racially down schools as we talk about under the Massachusetts law but we do have integrated schools I think out of the 200. There may be two schools that are not integrated. But speaking of the Brown case in that particular case even they said we could not have busing for the sake of racially balancing schools and there is a difference between integration and segregation and racially balancing. I've got to get some thumbnail sketches or gut reactions of various public figures in the city and in the country in August briefings.

Well you know I think that the press that they were going to have a heyday on the council that hey I was sitting beside Tom that concern the council and he was the one who sat in my office during the school problems time and I think you yourself were there and you could feel that Tom and I voted together many times because we were concerned with the with the city and I find that he has become a very good friend of mine and he helped me a great deal on the council. I heard a story once about the sit in in. September 1963 that he came in the room and started he started discussing his view of why the schools were in fact a de facto segregation and then he finished and you said well that's you know I don't agree with you but I'm glad that you had the opportunity. And then I said No I've got to say it again and all of a sudden half an hour later you were going to say is this is it in is not the way it happened. No actually what happened was that we had been warned you know that there would be sit ins in our office so that when he came to the door I asked him I said are you coming in to

discuss educational problems are you going to be a sit in the office and he said well I'm going to discuss educational problems but when he got in he told me that he was the sit in. All right Father drawn in. That's the drive and it would be a reaction in a gut reaction. Well first of all I don't agree in the philosophy of the Dragon on many occasions I have talked with him down in the Congress but he represents different people than I represent. And maybe he speaks for them or I speak for my job. I think he's a nice young man and I think that in time that he will maybe be one of the leaders in the city I think that he needs a great deal military. You told me once that in 1967 you used to take him around and almost shepherding him around and then all of a sudden two years later people were going to talk about him and you wondered if you had created your own Frankenstein. Not quite that but. Joe to multi ran for the city council and he

was not elected. When I ran for the mayoralty of the city I invited him to all my Paddy said he did attend and I would assume that many of my workers and friends were voting for him. And then he was elected to the council and of course I was defeated from near the city of Boston and then I noticed in the next city council race that he was one of my opponents and I think it was very important at that time that he talked the ticket because as you know that I did top the ticket by quite a majority. There was a lot of talk in the press about the top of the ticket and it was a sixer. TUMULTY I wonder is there a certain amount of competition like maybe there would be between two two gunslingers an older one and a younger one who's going to the fastest on the I don't know I think there's a great deal of competition for anyone who is running for the council I felt this all the time in my campaign so that you know campaigning of course against each one of the. People who are running for that particular office where in the Congress it's so different.

All right let's continue on Spiro Agnew. I think this Spiro Agnew I said many things that should have been said. And I admire him for the courage of this well of course we have seen him and his attacks on the news media in the particularly CBS and I think that he has said many things I think he has shown great courage in in fact let me say this that when he was the one who was selected to run for vice president they said Spiro Agnew who is he they don't say that today. Well but that gets to gets to a big point which is what is the purpose of a of a politician of a public figure. Agni was said that there's no reason that you have to accommodate that you have to draw a consensus that some good division of lines on basic ideological differences is good. And certainly you have not been a great healer a great builder of consensus you stuck by your position and the other side be damned. Do you think that that's the right role for a politician do you think you supposed to bring people together or is he supposed to set policies or positions and

then people can either be former again so I think that anyone who is supposed to be representing people is supposed to speak for the people. That this is the role of a politician. The role of a statesman that when you vote it isn't something maybe that you believe so strongly in as that people believe in. And in this particular case it's just that the majority of people in my district feel exactly the same way I do on the issues. But how about the people who don't I mean don't you have an obligation to them to to at least give them the sense that their views will not be agreed with at least represented that it isn't a lost an adversary proceeding in American politics. I certainly do represent all the people in the district and many of them have been coming into me from the Roxbury area I'm sure you mean this proud of the city and that anything I can do I think this was shown when I was chairman of the urban renewal committees in the city council. I received commendation from Mr. Paques who was the head of it at that time relative to rushing the programs for the models

neighborhoods in through the council. I certainly am very concerned about their needs and I don't want to stiff them just as much as anyone else in the city. All right last person President Nixon. We're going to do. Have you met him yet. Yes I have and I think he's a delightful politician and I know as a Democrat I'm not supposed to say anything very nice about him but on the other hand I certainly been treated royally by President Nixon. Tell me a little about what dealings you with him. Well the first time I really met him was in the White House and he had a reception for the new Congress. And I went there with my son. And you know when I passed along he said you know you're one of the very few Democrats that I was happy to see elected. And I don't know just what that means but I was pleased that he had even followed my campaign and he turned to his wife and he said why don't you tell Mrs. Hicks what we said in the dinner the other night and she said well we were discussing you and your campaign and the president said that he felt that there would be a woman president someday and that woman would be

Louise day Hicks So you see how much flattery he had to that time was he trying to get you over to the Republican Party like Strom Thurmond. Oh I'm sure he isn't. The national press coverage or mayoral campaign extensively in 1967 and recently there were descriptions of your supporters as from the matrons moon Mullens characters and beer slashers. Now the National Rural Press refers instead to the silent majority in middle America. What has changed is that the people of the press. Oh I think you know that sometimes people write just for the sake of reading their own literature. And certainly the labels that were placed on ice supporters were unfounded and they certainly were almost slanderous and libelous. I know that they suffered a great deal from the reports and I suffered too. It was a most unfair publication are you. Have you been interested in the development over the course of the last four years of a sense that. Poorer or more middle or lower class whites are a respectable political

force and in the national press their most respectable and every forests and the middle American today is the forgotten American and he's the one that I think politicians better step to speak because he needs help so badly. I wonder in Congress your view of politics has been so so eminently successful in this city. I want to do some of the other congressman sort of try and talk to you and wonder about your magic because you seem to have tapped the source that so many of them feel is the primary political source in this country. Oh I don't know I suppose everybody has their own way of politicking but I never honestly feel that I'm politicking because all I do is what Same thing I do every day of the year whether I'm running for office or whether I'm in office or out of office. I visit with the people I discuss their problems and try to help them. So there's no difference whether I'm campaigning or not. Of course you know you are though you would certainly would not deny a very savvy politician you know the wards of the city you know the precincts of the city.

I don't speak any differently in mod 1 than I speak in what 22. So it isn't any savvy. It's just that I firmly believe in certain things and I speak the same way anywhere I go. Do you regard yourself though as a professional politician. I don't know what that means if I'm paid I'm paid today and when I went on the council was the first time I ever was paid I had given about eight years of service in the bus to school committee unpaid. If that makes you a professional Let me ask you about that about the school committee I was talking to someone recently who said that the school committee tends to become political steppingstone because there is no salary so people can only use it for what it's worth which is they as a political stepping stone that if there were a high salary $10000 a year people would take it as a job and it would become much more educationally oriented and less politically oriented. I don't think that the savvy would help at all. I think that people who have served on the school committee have been getting dedicated. I just firmly believe in an elected

school board because I feel that is the only way that the people can speak. If we're going to have an appointive school board then it isn't going to be the people's school board. It's going to live to whoever is the appointing authority. Well but should it be the people school board isn't there an argument that if not the mayor at least the superintendent should have appointed or that the teachers should appoint them that it should be educationally oriented and educationally sophisticated people who decide what is going to run the school have a whole board of superintendent to handle the education of the children. The school committee will set the policy and after all remember it's children that make up the school compliment and children belong to parents they don't belong to the superintendent of schools. Talking about parents you were quoted in life in 1967 as saying I guess I should say that being a mother has been my greatest satisfaction. But to be honest with you I'd have to say it was passing the bar right. Why you. Was that so important to you. Well I think first of all it was very important to me because then I would be able to follow in the

footsteps and I fathom who was an attorney and a judge then I would be able to carry on where he left off by being able to help people with their problems and I think it is an achievement. And I have found it to be a great source of joy to me is that now even in my political career it does set me aside that even men who are attorneys that they haven't acquired anything more than I have. But that's why I think maybe it's been important to me. Well wasn't this ever done though or did you ever we were concerned that this was being done at the expense of your personal life I've read stories on like you talk about the live during between 150 and 55 when you were getting your law degree and you. Husband and two sons used to get up at 4:00 in the morning to study. Right. But I have always been able to sleep with very few hours and and I enjoyed it so very much to me it was much better than going to a movie going out in for dinner or anything. I love the law and in fact my father taught me that

if we're going to solve problems go to the law and read the books and read the cases. Here's where we're going to solve them. So it was a source of enjoyment to me. But wasn't I mean do you did you ever have concerns that possibly you weren't able to be with your your husband and you know particularly your sons. Well you see I went to law school at night Pat and sometimes I went in the morning. And at that time I have living with me a woman who was very close to my children. And of course it was taking me away from them that my husband was the type of a fellow that anything I wanted he wanted for me. And so what would you do you would actually get up at 4:00 in the morning. Well what I actually would do would be that when the children went to bed that I practically went to bed with them at the time and get up very early in the morning a stack to study and prepare the cases. So that and that way that I'd be ready for them in the morning when they awaken. During the 67 mayoral campaign with all of the polarization and talk of racism in the

air and that was the year that Newark and Detroit blew up in riots. Did you ever have any doubts that you would be able to govern Boston if you were elected. No you haven't and I don't have any doubts about it today. When you say you don't have any doubts about it today that sounds like you're considering governing Boston. I'm always considering governing blessed it. Let's talk about that Kevin why do you think he's as weak as indications in the primary in the final election last year showed. See I'm not a poll take a politician. I wouldn't have any idea. All I can say is that I know that the people were disappointed in me a faites administration. Well but you know you say you're not a poll taken politician but you you are people talking politics. What's the mood of the community. I think at the present time that if he were to run for reelection that he would be in serious trouble. Now whether he has time enough to make up between the time that he declares and runs this will remain to be seen and also it's going to depend a great deal upon who is this opposition.

Well I've heard people say that the mayoral race the mayoral seat in Boston in 1971 is there for the taking. Why do you like to say that. Well I've heard several people you have a little while ago. If you do feel that way really I think that the people are looking for change. But I think that the people when they make that change would have to have somebody in whom they had lost faith and belief. So I don't want to I don't want anyone to spread evil rumors but I heard just last night that when you least want to cheer for your Washington apartment you months ago the salesman asked you Would you like it for for one year or two. And you said one year would be just fine. One year is desperate for that a pat. Aren't you planning a long stay in Washington. That remains to be seen. When President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia last May. You were then a city councilor So that was a startling development. And that he must have had secret information. Now you were in Congress. You persuaded the president had secret

information that justified the Liles invasion. I think at the time that when he did the Laos that it was to stop the supplies coming down the whole trail that never could we have a help for secession a family not nice and nice that we were able to stop them getting supplies. I think this is exactly the reason it was done. I'm glad to see that with pulled out of Laos. Well do you think that that as a congresswoman you have a not only a right but a duty to challenge the president not to say he must have secret information which is either you show us the information you have to prove it to us. Because at the present time where we don't have a declaration of war we can't force that sort of thing. But what I'm going to do for nice self is that I am going to Vietnam during the recess of Congress and when I come back I hope I'll be able to add some many questions. Let me ask you if you want to Vietnam and you found that the Saigon government as

some people said is corrupt. If you found that as some people said that we really aren't making a dent in the villages. What would you do would you have the courage. Because you have been if not a hawk certainly you something of a pro-war don't favor the Vietnam War. Would you have the courage to get up and say darn it I was wrong this war is wrong and we should we should get out of there immediately. You know that I've had the coverage and other things so that I will only come back and tell you exactly the way that I feel about it. And if it's that sort of a statement then I'll make it. But I always remember that our boys have gone over there to fight communism on that front. And I would like to see a bloodbath of the South Vietnamese if we were going to pull out. I wouldn't like to see our prisoners of war left behind. I'm going to speak before the Palamon at South Vietnam. But more important I'm going into DNA and I'm going to speak with our boys there. I'm not accepting any briefings of any VIP tour. I'm going there to see for myself and to listen to those who are there fighting

forests. Do re with the president that the only way we can get American. Prisoners of War out is to stay there and maintain a presence ourselves. I don't know whether that's the answer. I know that at the present time that there wouldn't be any exchange of prisoners. And what I've been led to believe that when any prisoner is captured a fighter from the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese that he is considered really to be in shame in fact they have told us that some of the doctors wouldn't even treat their own doctors because they have such little regret for a prisoner of war of their own. So that I honestly can't believe that they exchange prisoners. I would hope they would but I just don't see it. Well you say that you don't believe that strange prisoners. Does that mean that you think that the only way we can get the prisoners out is by leaving and the negotiated afterwards. I would hate to ever make any kind of a settlement with the North Vietnamese Unless that it assured us that the person those of why were released. In fact I think that if a date

certain was set and I've never been in favor of such a thing that we would have to be sure that the prisoners were released even into some neutral country some place where that they we would be sure that they were brought home. I just don't think it's fair for us to set a date and to walk out and leave those boys behind that are in prison. Getting back to local politics Roxbury is a part of the Ninth Congressional District. Why didn't you campaign there last year. I campaigned in lyrics vary and also I have received many of the people from the model neighborhood programs have been in to see me. I've had the Boston Housing Authority and to see me and I think we have a working relation in Roxbury. Well you say you campaign in Roxbury. I was covering the race for the globe and you may have occasionally of course we're not with you all the time but you know there were number of big events the model neighborhood board candidates and I don't in Roxbury and several of the times when you when you weren't there and you said during the campaign you know as you said during the campaign that you

didn't feel that you should be going into Roxburgh all the time. Well let me say this I think I have 21 to 22 house parties in Roxbury and I think that if it would have been maybe difficult to of started to walk the streets of Rush because it was problems right on the streets. And I certainly didn't want to be the center of any other problems. But I think the people in Roxbury are staggering to realize that what I have been saying is true about neighborhood schools. And when they meet me I think it's been a different relationship than one that has been spread by the press and by those that really it helps their image to make some type of a. Plan with me. Well you know let's talk about that for us you went to the. During this 1971 campaign you did it almost exclusively white house parties which obviously is not a terribly public forum but in addition you were very loath to let the press come visit or you will do the 19 with a mayoral campaign in 67 make you somewhat gun

shy about press coverage. Well let me say this that maybe I just don't feel that I need you as much as other politicians need you. I think that the people in the night congressional district that they know Louise day Hicks and I think it was more important that I go to them and found out about their problems rather than just sitting and talking to the press. Well not to say talking the press but allowing the press to cover you you know you say that you didn't need us but I mean don't you think that the press does have a. Both a right and an obligation to cover the way a campaign go. I have never refused to have the press come in and talk to me when I was in my office at city hall. You know this as well as the others I have refused to have them come into the homes of people who do not want them there. And I think that anyone who was giving a party in her home that she has the absolute right to decide who is going to come in. Well you know you are so well known that the day would come your campaign is virtually underground in the sense that you don't have to put on commercials you don't have to put on billboards. It must not cost

very much for you to run a political campaign always cost money. But I mean let's say you certainly don't have a big media campaign. No I don't think that I have to. Tell people who I am I think everybody knows who I am. And so you just took a couple of. Oh I do a little more than that you know. We really worked very hard but as I said to you we don't start campaigning for your vote during the campaign. Every day I'm campaigning for your support because every day that I'm possibly I'm out in the district I'm talking with the people I'm serving them. I think this is the only fair way to do it. No right to come to people and say Vote for me just simply because maybe my hair is brown. I ask you to vote for me and support me because you believe in what I'm doing. What do you think your greatest strength as a public servant is the very fact that I'm one of the people. What do you think your greatest weaknesses. I don't know.

I mean don't you consider what it what it what it what your faults are the lot your liabilities you know sort of examine yourself. I really don't know what my witnesses have because I never think in the negative I only think in the positive. I wonder in the with all of the troubles in the Boston schools in the last few weeks and all of the demands and the statements of the school system is bad in a Dobie Asli is no narrow group I mean there are thousands of students across the. Across the city. Do you sometimes wonder that you would if you did a good job as a school in the school committee if maybe you should have been doing more to improve education. I think everybody should do more. But even during this particular these particular problems in the school I've been working very closely with the superintendent. I've been working with parents day and parent home and school associations. I asked them to sort of exert their own power and I think you've heard about parent power relative to the school problems. You know I am very concerned about the schools and in fact I have asked the chairman of the Special Education Committee in

Washington to bring this special committee into Boston and we are coming in after the recess in April and we're going to discuss juvenile delinquency and we're going to try to do something about the problems of crime in the schools. As you remember that as a member of the Boston City Council I appeared before the school committee and I asked them to form a committee at that time to search out the reason there's a six year and Congress three months a year already giving a filibuster we got to go. Oh I'm sorry. This has been Representative Louise day Hicks and conversation with Chris Wallace city hall reporter of The Boston Globe.