Dr. Rickey Hill has devoted much of his career to studying civil rights history, and now he is bringing his expertise to a state educational commission.
Hill, a political science professor and dean of the graduate school at Mississippi Valley State University, was one of 15 people appointed to the Civil Rights Education Commission. The group will develop an agenda for a civil rights curriculum to be implemented in all Mississippi public schools.
Former Gov. William Winter is chairman of the commission. Besides Winter, there are four other permanent members: Dr. Susan M. Glisson of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, Dr. Leslie McLe-more of Jackson State University, Dr. Abdul M. Turay of Tougaloo College and Dr. Eddie Aaron Holloway of the University of Southern Mississippi.
One of the other 10 members is Dianna Freelon-Foster of
Grenada, who graduated from MVSU.
The group is expected to prepare reports for the governor and the Legislature, although no timetable has been set. A budget of $100,000 has been approved for its first year.
The commission has met four times, and Hill said the sessions have been spirited and informative. It has a mix of blacks and whites, men and women, some of whom grew up in Mississippi and others who did not.
"It's a good diverse group of people," he said. "So the meetings have been good meetings where folks have been able to tell their stories and frame those stories in the context of our effort to in fact establish an agenda."
Hill, 54, is in his third year at Valley. He was nominated for the commission by two MVSU colleagues: Tazinski Lee, now interim assistant vice president for academic affairs, and Mack Jones, director of the Delta Research and Cultural Institute.
The commission will examine how much civil rights education is being done in the state, what should be added and what resources are available. For example, Hill said, Tougaloo has good archives on this topic, and Mississippi Valley State and Jackson State universities can contribute as well.
The state Department of Education surveyed parents and educators about a civil rights curriculum, and a majority of the respondents agreed that it was needed, Hill said. He also believes this fits in well with the development of the state civil rights trail and the blues trail.
The commission has discussed conducting town meetings and/or using focus groups on civil rights education. Parents and teachers will be consulted, and the commission will seek out people who can share their personal stories. "What we are trying to do is have as much broad-based discussion across the state as possible," Hill said.
Hill has plenty of stories of his own on this subject.
He grew up in Bogalusa, La., a hotbed of civil rights activity surrounding the integration of schools and businesses such as Crown Zellerbach paper company. Before his senior year, he was elected student body president of the black high school; after integration, he and a white student served as co-presidents.
"We had to go to court to make that system work because there was a great deal of resistance on the part of whites," he said.
Hill was involved in demonstrations from a young age, and he continued that activity at Southern University. As vice president of the Black Stone Society - "sort of the militant group on campus," he called it - he worked to give students more of a voice in academics and other matters.
"We wanted to keep questions alive - not only about student life but also about what was going on outside the campus," he said.
He and a few other students were expelled in 1972 after a protest at the university president's office. Students had boycotted classes for much of a semester over a number of grievances, and they were demanding that the president get some students out of jail. The president called the state police, who showed up in riot gear, and two students were killed.
Hill and five others accused of disruption were arrested, went to trial and were barred from campus. "Louisiana had a law at the time that said if you interfered with the educational processes - and that was broad enough to mean almost anything - you were subject to being kicked out of school and also imprisoned," he recalled.
He went on to earn an advanced bachelor's degree from Fisk University and master's and doctoral degrees from Atlanta University.
Hill said he decided early that he wanted to pursue a doctorate. He was interested in not just the electoral side of politics, but in the relationship between politics and power. He remembers what happened when he told a guidance counselor about his plans.
"She told me, 'No, don't do that; you're going to get in trouble,'" he said. "And I guess to some extent she was right, because I did get in trouble. But I never lost the zeal, if you will, to study politics, and I was fascinated by it."
As an educator, he tries to take his experiences and his knowledge of political theory and apply them to everyday life.
"One of the things that was important for me to do was to pursue and tell the truth," he said, "and academe seemed to be the least fettered place to do that."
