Our Founder: JONATHAN P. HICKS

ABOUT JONATHAN P. HICKS

The J.P. Hicks Scholarship was created by the family of Jonathan P. Hicks, a longtime journalist and writer. During his career, Mr. Hicks was a financial and political reporter with The New York Times, a columnist for the New York Amsterdam News, a senior correspondent for Black Entertainment Television (BET) News and a senior fellow at the DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York. He was the co-editor of the book, From Disaster to Diversity: What’s Next for New York City’s Economy? He also was a script writer for Back Channels: The Price of Peace, a documentary about the Camp David Peace Accords, which opened the 2009 Monte Carlo Television and Film Festival. 

His family lived in Monrovia while his father, John Henry Hicks, a former journalist and former United States diplomat, served at the American Embassy in Liberia. John Hicks, who was the first African American reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, supervised the operation of the United States Information Service’s library in downtown Monrovia and hosted a weekly public affairs program on ELBC Radio in Monrovia. It was during that time that Jonathan Hicks formed a connection with Liberia and its people that would last throughout his life. 

In the fall of 2009, Jonathan Hicks traveled to Liberia on a grant from the Ford Foundation to write articles and conduct broadcasts about the redevelopment of the country as well as to lay the groundwork for a training program for professional and aspiring journalists there. While in Liberia, he was a guest lecturer in the Mass Communications Department at the University of Liberia. After meeting so many talented and committed students who had few resources, he determined that there was a need to support those students, who would become the country’s next generation of journalists, through scholarships and mentoring opportunities. 

Mr. Hicks was a life member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. and was initiated into the Delta Omega Chapter of the fraternity in 1976. He also served two stints as editor of the Kappa Alpha Psi Journal, one of the oldest continuous publications in the African American community. Mr. Hicks also received the Elder Watson Diggs Award, one of the Fraternity’s highest honors.