When Fredrick Hickmon was coming of age in Nanih Waiya, a rural area near Louisville, working on farms felt like the only option he had – even though the pay was bad and the conditions were worse.
“In Nanih Waiya it was simple,” he told The Dispatch on Thursday. “If you were working, it was in somebody’s field. Gathering things like cucumbers, peas, butterbeans. Or you were chopping cotton, where you remove weeds. It was the only job we had. You couldn’t just go to McDonald’s or Sonic.”
It was the Prairie Opportunity Community Action Agency that lifted him from those conditions. At 17, it helped him land a job as a school custodian at Nanih Waiya Attendance Center, and from there Hickmon worked his way up into school administration and earned a doctorate in education leadership.
When the time came to retire, however, he was given the option to instead come back to the organization that gave him that first chance, becoming Prairie Opportunity’s executive director this year. He leads the organization today in a new push to give others the exact same break that let him climb his way out of poverty.
Prairie Opportunity, based in Starkville, serves a combined 14 neighboring counties in the Golden Triangle Planning and Development District. The nonprofit is funded through a combination of state and federal grants, along with private donations.
It provides services to low income families, along with other services to elderly and disabled residents of certain counties.
Hickmon still remembers what that help meant to him getting his first job almost four decades ago. He went from getting $15 each day as a farmhand to $25 as a janitor, but it also restored his dignity as a worker and the possibility of advancement.
“You have to work in a field to understand where I’m coming from,” he said. “Having lunch in the field and having lunch as an inside worker are two totally different things. You can’t imagine it being so hot. There’s no music, and whatever the elements are outside, that’s your experience. You don’t complain about it because that means you don’t want to work and that brings your value down as a person.”
Hickmon became a teacher, then district administrator, elevating to principal and assistant superintendent roles. He also coached basketball.
By the time he was ready to retire from education, he held degrees in political science, history and education across three universities. He is an adjunct professor at Mississippi State University and the University of Mississippi.
Even three months in, Hickmon has begun to build a framework that he hopes will allow other people in similar circumstances as he grew up in to make the same journey to self-sufficiency.
He’s forming partnerships with local businesses, entering people into the workforce as trainees while paying them real wages from Prairie Opportunity’s state grant funding. The company gets a new trainee for free and an opportunity to help the community, and the trainee gets experience and a chance at a job they might not otherwise.
The nonprofit helps those in the program with many of the same financial supports it always has, assisting with life expenses like rent and utilities. It offers guidance from professional case workers, and more esoteric services with weatherizing houses, a task coordinated by Sheryl Perkins.
“If you’re elderly, disabled or have children under 18, own your home and meet our income guidelines, we’ll weatherize your home,” Perkins said. “Prairie pays a lot of light and gas bills, so we’re trying to make homes more energy efficient.”
Hickmon says he heard about a program with BankPlus that let people build their credit with small loans, and after learning more about it tried the CreditPlus program himself. Requiring no collateral from Prairie Opportunity, he’s now employing it more broadly as a way to help clients build their credit to qualify for affordable housing or a down payment on their own home.
Never one to forget the importance of education, Hickmon offers a similar pathway for students and adults pursuing degrees. As long as students check in regularly with a case worker and meet benchmarks working toward their degree, Prairie Opportunity will help support them on the path toward stability.
It’s still early days for the program, but it already has roughly a dozen clients working their way through the two- or three-year course. Hickmon is hopeful about what it could become, and actively seeking out new business partners, schools and banks to participate.
“When I found out about this opportunity, it was like coming home,” he said. “There are people here in this community who are like me. I want them to have the same opportunity I had. I want them to experience the same thing I experienced. And the reason I came back is because I wanted to help.”
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
