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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 watching the inauguration of Barack Obama on TV. |
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COMPLETE INAUGURATION COVERAGE
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On his way into his living room Tuesday morning, Lord Nickens glanced at 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 KKK members to an 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 Barack 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. Over the course of his long life, Nickens has experienced firsthand the ugliness of racial discrimination in many forms. He wondered what those who refused to serve him food because of the color of his skin, who insulted him, who told him that the "black God" was inferior to the white man, who arrested him for walking in public, who threatened his life as he fought for equal rights, were thinking at the moment when Obama was sworn in. "Those people, I would like to see their faces now," he said. After Obama's inaugural address, Nickens said he felt like a load of bricks had been dropped from his back. "It makes you feel that you've been accepted by society, by a country that once degraded you, that you fought for this freedom every day of your life," he said. "It makes you feel as though you are a new person." "The future looks bright," he said.
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