Louise Day Hicks - Mayoral Bid, City Council, and Congress

Mayoral Bid, City Council, and Congress

In 1967, Hicks came within 12,000 votes of being elected mayor of Boston, running on the coded slogan "You know where I stand." The race against fellow Democrat Kevin White became so acrimonious that the Boston Globe broke a 75-year tradition of political neutrality to endorse White. After the unsuccessful mayoral bid, Hicks ran for city council and won. Two years later, after Speaker John W. McCormack retired, Hicks beat out 11 other candidates to win the Democratic primary for his South Boston-based congressional district; in heavily Democratic Boston, the winner of that primary was essentially assured victory in the November election. She served one term in the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1973, becoming the first female Democrat to represent Massachusetts in the House. A member of the National Organization for Women, while in Congress Hicks lobbied for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. She sought reelection, but was narrowly defeated in the general election by City Councilman Joe Moakley, a more liberal Democrat who was running as an Independent. Moakley reverted to his Democratic party affiliation after he entered the House.

In 1973, Hicks ran for the Boston City Council again and won. Her most notable campaign took place in autumn 1975, after a federal judge ordered Boston schools to expand their busing programs to comply with the 1971 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education decision. To counter the trend, Hicks started an organization called Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR) which actively engaged in incidents of massive resistance to school desegregation. In 1976, Hicks was elected the first woman president of the Boston City Council, largely on the strength of ROAR, which was then at its peak. During this time Hicks supported another controversial position, a curfew for minors in the city of Boston.