Sandra E. Adickes Papers

Sandra E. Adickes was born on July 14, 1933, in New York City to August and Edythe Oberschlake Adickes. She has a sister, Joanne Adickes Walker, and three adopted daughters, Delores, Lily, and Cynthia. She received a Bachelor's degree in English from Douglass College in 1954, a Master's in English Education from Hunter College in 1964, and a Ph.D. from New York University in 1977. She has taught English in New York public high schools, branches of the City University of New York, and at Winona State University in Minnesota. Adickes served as an editor for By a Woman Writt, published in 1973. In addition to numerous articles, she has also authored several books: The Social Quest (1991), Legends of Good Women (1992), and To Be Young Was Very Heaven (1997).

In 1963, Adickes spent part of her summer teaching in the black community of Prince Edward County, Virginia, where public schools had been closed in response to the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision to outlaw segregation. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, inspired by the Virginia project, organized a similar project for Mississippi for the next summer. Adickes was recruited by SNCC, and on July 4, 1964, after attending an orientation and training session at LeMoyne College in Memphis, she came to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she served as a freedom school teacher at Priest Creek Baptist Church in Palmer's Crossing.

At the end of the summer, Adickes accompanied six of her students to the Hattiesburg Public Library, where the children were denied library cards. As a result of their persistence, the police were called and the library was closed. The group then made its way to the lunch counter at the Kress store. In compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the waitress allowed the students to place orders. However, she refused to serve Adickes. The group decided to leave, and when they walked outside, Adickes was arrested for vagrancy, even though she was carrying $70 in cash. Attorney Eleanor Jackson Piel took on the case, which was removed to federal court and dismissed. In turn, Adickes sued Kress for denying her civil rights. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but was settled out of court in 1970. Adickes donated the money she received from the settlement to the Southern Conference Educational Fund. Among those who received financial assistance from Adickes' contribution were Jimmella Stokes, one of Adickes' most promising freedom school students, and the children of slain civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer.