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Photo by Bill Green
Lord Nickens, 95, served as president of the Frederick chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1972 to 1994. He sat in his Adamstown home Tuesday watching as the inauguration of Barack Obama was on television. |
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On his way into his living room this morning, Lord Nickens glanced over the photographs of his family members on the wall, many of whom died years ago.
“I wished it were possible that my past brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents could witness this experience,” he said.
Nickens, 95, served as president of the Frederick chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1972 to 1994. He was one of the first Frederick residents to join the Army in 1940 under the Selective Service act. He shook hands with Martin Luther King Jr. and received a plaque from Rosa Parks.
During the 1980s, Nickens battled the Frederick County government in federal court for issuing the Ku Klux Klan permits to hold rallies and won.
He invited the KKK to a NAACP meeting at Frederick ’s Asbury Church in the 1980s in his efforts to reach out to the enemy. “I was always a believer in dialogue,” he said.
The inauguration of Barrack Obama marks a turning point, he said.
“Every minority I believe in America, even the radical ones, believed that one day this would happen in America, but it came so unexpectedly,” he said.
For more on this story, check out Wednesday's edition of The Frederick News-Post.
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