Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

As Washington Parish prepares to celebrate Robert “Bob” Hicks Day, on Thursday, Feb. 20, the Hicks Foundation is asking the citizens of Bogalusa to help with the foundation’s quest to preserve Bogalusa’s role in the civil rights movement.

Citizens are requested to spend that day collecting any photographs, pictures, paintings, signs/posters, furniture, old clothes — including shoes — that were worn or were used during the early days of integration or that were in some way connected to the Bogalusa and Washington Parish Civil Rights Movement. Citizens can help the foundation by checking closets, basements and attics for those long-forgotten items that will help tell the community’s history.

Barbara Hicks Collins, the executive director of the Robert “Bob” Hicks Foundation, also asks for citizens to collect any objects, furniture, clothes, pots, pans, plates, photographs or artwork used or showing life and the experience of living in mill houses/company houses in the neighborhoods — on both the south side and north side of Bogalusa.

These pictures and objects from the past are needed to provide tangible evidence to support the stories of individuals and events, and many will be displayed in the Civil Rights Museum and the Historic 1906 Mill House on Robert “Bob” Hicks Street, according to the executive director.

In addition, the Hicks Foundation is interested in recording any stories about life in the old mill houses, before and during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Hicks Collins also asked that if any citizen finds some memorabilia, objects or photographs/articles, etc., please provide the foundation with a list of items that could be shared and donated to the museum or the mill house.

Citizens can send contact information and a short description of each object to Hicks Collins by email at bbhickscollins@gmail.com. If a citizen does not have access to email, call Hicks Collins at 504-237-4656 and she will provide the necessary information to help with donations and descriptions.

All citizens are welcome to donate and be included in the foundation’s efforts of preserving history for generations to come.