Dr. Reginald Hawkins - in Memory of a Civil Rights Giant

On Monday, Sept. 10, America lost one of its unsung legends to the hereafter. Dr. Reginald Hawkins - whose name was synonymous with the fight for equal rights throughout the Mid-Atlantic states - died at Carolinas Medical Center-Mercy campus in Charlotte, NC. Although not as popular as Rev. Martin Luther King, his amazing style and charisma championed the cause of African-American rights as few have ever done.

"Doc Hawkins," as his friends knew him, was a dentist and ordained minister who lived the cause of civil rights. In the summer 1954, he and others in Charlotte sat down at the new Douglas Airport restaurant. They were denied service immediately due to their color. Yet, they used that denial of launch a letter-writing campaign to the Federal Aviation Administration and other governmental bodies that resulted in desegregation of the airport's restaurant two years later. In 1961, Hawkins led a controversial two-week boycott of what was then Irwin Avenue Junior High School in Charlotte. He told students to stay home rather than attend a second-rate facility: "Tell them you're sick of segregation and hand-me-down-itis." At a May, 1963 rally on the steps of the Mecklenburg County (NC) Courthouse, he shouted, "We are not going to cooperate anymore with segregation. We shall not be pacified with gradualism; we shall not be satisfied with tokenism. We want freedom and we want it now."

Throughout his life, the stocky preacher was extremely vocal about the equality issue, with the spirit of the cause animating him like a Pentacostal evangelist (though he was Presbyterian by denomination): shouting, waving his arms, prancing about the stage, and telling his message with an ad-lib, machine-gun delivery that his supporters loved. Heknew, within his very soul, the message he had to get out, so there was no need for notes.He actively fought for desegregation in local schools, hotels, restaurants, hospitals and the YWCA with the same passion that he brought to every podium, lecturn and audience.