Black Newsman James Hicks Dies

James L. Hicks, a former war correspondent and executive editor of the New York Voice and the Amsterdam News and the first black correspondent accredited during the Korean War, died Sunday of complications from a stroke. He was 70.

Hicks, who rose from private to captain in the Army in World War II, receiving a presidential citation for commanding troops in New Guinea, became Washington bureau chief of the National Negro Press Assn. after the war.

Hicks was the first black war correspondent to land in Korea and the first black accredited to cover the United Nations.

From 1955 to 1966, Hicks was executive editor of the Amsterdam News, for many years the nation’s largest black weekly newspaper.

From 1966 to 1970, Hicks was New York’s human rights commissioner and, from 1970 to 1972, was deputy director of communications for the National Urban League.

Hicks returned to his Amsterdam News post in 1972, staying until 1977, then became executive editor of the New York Voice, which calls itself New York’s interracial newspaper, in 1978.