The nonviolent sentiments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. usually dominate most people's thinking about the civil rights movement, but there were blacks who took up arms to protect themselves and their families when local and federal government failed to do so. Robert Hicks was one of those men.

In 1965, Hicks was hosting two white civil rights workers in his home in Boagalusa, La. He got a call that the Ku Klux Klan was headed to bomb his house. Local police claimed to be powerless to protect him. This was just a few months after three civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi. Hicks and his wife sent their children away with friends and called for help.

A group of armed black men showed up to stand watch in front of his house. The Klan never showed up. Later, when the head of Deacons for Defense and Justice visited his town, Hicks took the lead in forming a chapter. The group believed in armed defense against the attacks of groups like the KKK. It often stood silent guard over protesters from groups that advocated nonviolence. But Hicks' role in the civil rights movement did not end there.

According to the New York Times:

"He led daily protests month after month in Bogalusa -- then a town of 23,000, of whom 9,000 were black -- to demand rights guaranteed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And he filed suits that integrated schools and businesses, reformed hiring practices at the mill and put the local police under a federal judge's control.

It was his leadership role with the Deacons that drew widest note, however. The Deacons, who grew to have chapters in more than two dozen Southern communities, veered sharply from the nonviolence preached by the Rev. Dr. King. They carried guns, with the mission to protect against white aggression, citing the Second Amendment."

Hicks died of cancer in Bogalusa two weeks ago. He was 81 and is survived by his wife, five of his six children and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.A member of the NAACP from an early age, Hicks' lawsuit desegregated his town's public schools. He also helped eliminate the unfair tests and hiring practices that limited blacks from getting good jobs at the local mill, where he rose to be the first black supervisor. Hicks was an important voice during the civil rights movement, traveling the country to make others aware of what was really happening in the South.

Through his lawsuits, Hicks also forced police to protect protesters during marches and knocked down their efforts to prevent the marches. The federal government was forced into using Reconstruction-era laws to force police to protect demonstrators.

According to the New York Times:

"Adam Fairclough, in his book "Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972" (1995), wrote that Bogalusa became "a major test of the federal government's determination to put muscle into the Civil Rights Act in the teeth of violent resistance from recalcitrant whites."

Mr. Hicks was repeatedly jailed for protesting. He watched as his 15-year-old son was bitten by a police dog. The Klan displayed a coffin with his name on it beside a burning cross. He persisted, his wife said, for one reason: "It was something that needed to be done.""

His suits also opened the way for the construction of public housing in segregated neighborhoods. Hicks was also renowned in his community for his acts of kindness.

Hicks' life serves as an example for black men today. He stood up against injustice during a time when it easily could have gotten him killed.

Today, we have the civil rights that Hicks fought for, but black men are lacking bravery. We are not out fighting against the injustices of our day. We are not standing up for our families. We are not being the fathers and husbands that we should be.

We should be out like Hicks, on patrol, stopping the violence that is consuming our kids. We should be in the schools making sure our kids are being properly educated. We should be good role models by modeling the behavior we want our kids to emulate.

Hicks used all means available to accomplish his goal of making sure future generations did not grow up with the restrictions on their civil rights that he faced. When the available methods did not work, he became creative.

There are numerous black men doing all of these things already, but we need more men to step up and do it now.

"I became very proud of black men," Valeria Hicks told the Times about her husband's efforts. "They didn't bow down and scratch their heads. They stood up like men."