Ora Higgins Youth Foundation to hold 47th College Scholarship Dinner

Photo caption: ORA HIGGINS YOUTH Foundation is hosting its 47th College Scholarship Dinner on October 28, from 12 noon to 4 p.m. at the New Martinique, 8200 S. Cicero Ave., Burbank, Illinois. The Foundation was started by Ora Higgins, the first African American personnel director, who worked at Spiegel’s store for 40 years. She died on July 12, 2012, at the age of 101. Ora Higgins (left) is pictured during a birthday celebration with media specialist, talk show host and journalist Chinta Strausberg (right). (Photo Provided)

Many called her “Mama Ora,” because she was a master teacher who loved her students and was the first African American personnel director who integrated staffing in every department of Spiegel’s facilities, ensuring Blacks were paid the same and used the same facilities as whites.

Higgins’ daughter, Murrell Higgins Duster, said her mother worked at Spiegel’s mail order retail store for 40 years. At the same time, Ora Higgins also taught adult night school at Dunbar High School on Wednesday nights for 33 years.

After Higgins retired from Spiegel’s, her daughter said her mother was courted by CEOs from Chicago downtown companies. They hired her to integrate their mostly white workforces. “Most of them had not attempted in many ways to integrate their staff,” Duster recalled. “My mother showed them how, particularly Marshall Field’s and other Loop stores.”

After that task was completed, her daughter said her mother began to work “strongly with Fisk University, Tennessee State and other HBCUs and became friends with the presidents of those colleges and was able to get some of those students who graduated hired as part of their staff.”

Born September 24, 1910, in Birmingham, Alabama, Higgins came to Chicago where she earned her bachelor’s degree in personnel administration and a master’s degree in business law from Northwestern University.

When Spiegel’s hired her, she began an aggressive integration plan for all of the mail order facilities. In charge of hundreds of employees, Higgins taught executives and lower management about the perils of racism, including exposing and making them face the stereotypes many whites had about people of color, especially Blacks.

Higgins, who was the great-great aunt of former First Lady Michelle Obama, said her mother made sure African Americans were paid the same wages as whites at Spiegel’s and that they shared the same facilities. In her teachings about racism, Higgins peeled back their fears about accepting Blacks in a professional way.

She was in charge of hundreds of employees, and Higgins carved out time to talk to employees if they were having adjustment problems with her integration program. However, she made it clear that she would not tolerate racism at Spiegel’s.

Higgins’ administration swept in an era and an end to racism at Spiegel’s and left a blueprint for other companies to follow.

It was her passion to educate African Americans that kept her energy flowing until she died at the age of 101, but, according to her daughter, “Her spirit lives on.”

In an interview with the Chicago Crusader, Duster said the Ora Higgins Youth Foundation “was founded to continue the support of the vision that Ora Higgins, the founder, had for assisting our students and achieving goals that would promote their lives in the best way.

“She knew that without community support, the students would still be floundering, but every little bit helps from everyone,” said Duster.

That is why Higgins founded the Ora Higgins Foundation, and her daughter is making sure her mother’s legacy and passion for educating the youth continues.

The Foundation is hosting its 47th anniversary on Saturday, October 28, from 12 noon to 4 p.m. at the New Martinique, 8200 S. Cicero Ave., in Burbank, Illinois. R.S.V.P. by Friday, October 13; a $70 donation is requested.

Duster said her mother’s theme song was, “If I can do something to help somebody along the way, then my living would not be in vain.” Duster is making sure her mother’s life was not in vain by continuing the Foundation.

Higgins was always there for students, including this reporter who left home at 16, lived with her for a year, then got an apartment a year later during my senior year. When I signed my report card with an address that was outside of the school district, school officials threatened to kick me out of school months before graduation. One call to Mama Ora ended that. I graduated on time.

A mother of two, Higgins died on Wednesday, July 25, 2012, at the age of 101 in Arizona, surrounded by family, including her son, Reverend Chico Higgins.

For ticket information, call 312.342.7618.