After writing for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, he moved to New York City where in 1960, he founded and chaired the On Guard Committee for Freedom, a Black nationalist literary organization in the Lower East Side.
Its members included Nannie and Walter Bowe, Harold Cruse, Amiri Baraka, Tom Dent, Rosa Guy, Joe Johnson, Archie Shepp, and Sarah Wright, among others.
Hicks was also a member of the Harlem Writers Guild, and active in the Black Arts Movement, where he is considered to have been one of the primary players.
[2] As a freelance writer, his articles appeared in Freedomways, New Challenge, New York Age.
In 1984, he graduated from Cambridge College with a master's degree in the philosophy of education.