In his teens he began to collect literature and read about radical political movements across the spectrum, from communist groups to the John Birch Society. He continued to pursue this interest when he entered the University of Kansas at twenty years old and won an award for his collection of books on political movements. A few years later he had accumulated roughly four file drawers of material, and the University library reached out to him with a desire to acquire a portion of his collection. An agreement was reached in 1965, and the library paid Wilcox $1000 for the material that would go on to constitute the foundation of the Wilcox Collection as it is known today.