Her challenges continued. When Ms. Hicks applied for the apprenticeship program at her hometown electrical union, she found herself being interviewed by five white men.

“They told me, ‘You know three white women tried before you and failed,’” she recalled. “‘Don’t you think it’s going to be hard you being a black female?’ And I said, ‘Nope.’”

She was right. Ms. Hicks was the first woman to complete the five-year program becoming the first female journeyman electrician in Local 917 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (I.B.E.W.) and among the first few African-American women in Mississippi to do so. (Only 6.8 percent of electricians are black or African-American, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

Ms. Hicks was tenacious. She traveled long distances to find work at car plants and steel mills and in the construction of airports from Mississippi to Michigan. She did not blink at being on the job 12 hours a day, seven days a week as she learned her trade.

The workplace could be frustrating. “There were many times when I would show up at a job and no man talked to me, or acknowledged my presence,” she said. “Many times, the foremen on the jobs didn’t know what to do with me because I was the only woman. They would send me to the material trailer to clean it up, instead of working a job on the floor. That’s how I learned about the construction business and how to estimate. I would read everything I found there.”

When a co-worker urged her to start her own business, she never looked back.

“I had worked for nine different employers that year and was ready to take control of my career,” she said.

So in 2000, Ms. Hicks started Power Solutions, an electrical contracting firm based in Atlanta that focused on commercial and industrial buildings and now specializes in renewable energy and smart-city technology. She was 28. “I bought a computer and had my business cards made with clip art of a woman electrician with a lightning bolt,” Ms. Hicks said. “That’s me.”