Marie Hicks, 83, the "Rosa Parks of Girard College," circled the 10-foot wall of the school for the last time yesterday.
The hearse carrying her body led 10 of the cars in the funeral cortege in which her three sons, daughter and others rode. It proceeded through Girard's front gate, past Founder's Hall, and briefly paused at the foot of the statue of Stephen Girard and Founder's Hall.
The procession ended at Mrs. Hicks' final resting place, Beverly National Cemetery in Burlington County.
Family and friends gathered at Girard following the burial.
In 1965, Mrs. Hicks, whose husband had died the year before, wanted to enroll two of her sons in Girard College. The founder, wealthy merchant and banker Stephen Girard, left his fortune in 1831 to establish a school "in which poor, white male orphans could be housed and educated."
In 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educating black and white children separately was unconstitutional. That year, a suit was filed to seek admission to Girard for six African American students.
In 1956, a state Supreme Court ruled that "a man's prejudices are part of his liberty" and Girard remained segregated.
The will was contested again in 1957. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Girard's whites-only provision was illegal and that the school could not discriminate because the Board of City Trusts, which oversees the school, was a state agency. The case was returned to the lower courts. Orphans' Court created a private body to oversee the school to avoid integrating Girard.
In 1965, Cecil B. Moore, president of the Philadelphia NAACP, and lawyer William T. Coleman recruited Mrs. Hicks and three other parent plaintiffs to file a suit in U.S. District Court on behalf of seven African American students. Mrs. Hicks led protesters, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in marches around the 10-foot wall surrounding Girard College for a year.
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that African American boys could be admitted to Girard College. That year, four boys, including Theodore Hicks and, four months later, Charles Hicks, enrolled at Girard.
Mrs. Hicks died last Thursday of Parkinson's disease.
