By Ivan Pereira
Although the 73-year-old health-care management consultant worked many years as a high-ranking administrator in city hospitals and agencies, he had to use his wit, street smarts and instinct to prove himself to his colleagues and superiors.”For minorities, it's hard to get high-level positions, but it is also hard for them to maintain them,” he said. “There's always that element of risk, so you have to use your gut.”Hickman, who holds a doctorate in management, said his story was common among black Americans coming into the corporate world during the 1960s, so he never gives up the chance to tell his story to a new generation of black Americans.Born in Florida and raised by his blind grandmother, Hickman became the first member of his family to earn a high-school degree. The accomplishment did not come easy – he had to work long hours after school and summers as a field worker on farms in Florida and Virginia.”Every summer I had to get on a migrant worker truck and work on the potato fields and chicken coops. That was my way to clothe myself through high school and provide for my grandmother,” he said.Hickman soon enlisted in the army and was stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, where he learned the basics of administrative work through on-the-job training. He impressed his superiors so much that they promoted him to chief finance clerk. He was the first black person to hold that position at the base.Despite racist insults from his white colleagues when he received the promotion, Hickman pressed on.”I had to live with all of the white guys in the office and I was known as the Oreo,” he said. “It bothered me, but in the end I was still their boss.”When his two-year service ended, Hickman began working as a clerk at Montefiore Hospital's purchasing department in the summer of 1960. He once again impressed his bosses and within a few years was promoted to senior buyer, which made him responsible for purchasing all of the supplies, food and resources for the Bronx hospital.Although he was happy with the promotion, Hickman wanted to back it up with something that would make him and his family proud: a college degree.”To be able to relate to the kids and show them how important education was, I had to do it by example,” he said.Hickman started with his associate's degree from Borough of Manhattan Community College and later earned his bachelor's degree from Empire State College. He decided to take his education two steps further by earning a master's degree from the New School and his doctorate from California Coast University four years ago.”It took me 15 years to get my master's and eight years to get my Ph.D, but I knew I could not quit,” he said.At the same time, Hickman began moving up within the health-care management world, becoming assistant administrator at Albert Einstein Hospital, overseeing all of the facility's non-medical operations. Hickman said he had to work extra hard to keep himself and his staff honest, as outside companies would try to influence hospital buyers to purchase inefficient equipment with bribes and other illegal means.”I would not allow buyers to take my staff out to dinner or buy gifts. The one thing I tell everyone is to be honest,” he said.Hickman, a father of seven and grandfather of nine, later worked for the Health and Hospitals Corporation and retired in 1998.His golden years have not slowed him down at all. He still works as a health-care consultant and recently published a book, “The Managed Care Revolution,” in which he draws on his 46 years of experience to examine the impact of managed care on the nursing profession.”I wrote the book not so much for a money-making venture, it wasdone to show my kids and grandkids what I have done,” he said. “All that I've done has come from hard work and I'm not ashamed to say that.”Reach reporter Ivan Pereira by e-mail at ipereira@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 146.
