Benjamin Hooks

Lawyer, minister, and civil rights leader

• Born: January 31, 1925
• Birthplace: Memphis, Tennessee
• Died: April 15, 2010
• Place of death: Memphis, Tennessee

Hooks was a civil rights leader who served as executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for sixteen years. He also was a member of the Federal Communications Commission, where he campaigned for more accurate and positive portrayals of African Americans in the media.

Early Life

Benjamin Lawson Hooks was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 31, 1925, to Robert and Bessie Hooks; he was the fifth of seven children. Robert operated a photography studio, which provided the family with a comfortable lifestyle. Both of Hooks’s parents emphasized the importance of education and community service, and from a young age, Hooks was expected not only to earn good grades but also to prepare for college. He was a shy child growing up in segregated Memphis, where he attended all-black public schools.

As a child, Hooks idolized the Reverend G. A. Long, a local minister whose church went against city orders by hosting a speech by A. Philip Randolph, an African American labor leader. Hooks’s father shunned organized religion, but Hooks always was interested in the ministry. He considered a career as a minister but later decided to become a lawyer.

Hooks graduated from high school in 1941 and enrolled at LeMoyne College in Memphis to begin his prelaw studies. However, World War II interrupted his education. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and served with the Ninety-second Infantry Division in Italy. After the war, Hooks continued his college education at Howard University, from which he graduated in 1944. He could not find a law school in Memphis that would admit African Americans, so he moved to Chicago and earned a law degree from DePaul in 1948.

Life’s Work

Determined to use his law degree to fight for civil rights and end legal segregation, Hooks returned to his hometown of Memphis. He passed the Tennessee bar exam but could not find a law office that would hire an African American lawyer, so he opened his own. In 1949, he met a teacher named Frances Dancy, whom he married in 1951 and with whom he adopted a daughter. He rekindled the passion he had for religion and ministry as a child and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1956. Hooks became pastor of the Middle Baptist Church of Memphis.

Hooks became a prominent figure in the community and, in 1961, he became the assistant public defender of Shelby County. Four years later, he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the criminal court of Shelby County, which made him the first African American criminal court judge in Tennessee.

After the 1950’s, Hooks became an active participant in the Civil Rights movement and served on the thirty-three-member board of directors for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) from 1957 until 1977. He also cofounded and served as vice president of the Mutual Federal Savings and Loan Association in Memphis. When Richard M. Nixon was reelected as president of the United States in 1972, he appointed Hooks to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), making him the first African American to serve in that agency. In the FCC, Hooks worked especially hard to improve employment and ownership opportunities for African Americans in the media industry, and he advocated for more positive depictions of African Americans in the mass media. Under his supervision, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established, and the number of African Americans employed by the FCC rose from 3 percent to 15 percent.

In 1977, Hooks resigned from his position at the Federal Communications Commission because he had been unanimously elected by the board of directors to serve as the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He took leadership of the organization at a particularly difficult time because it was nearly $1 million in debt and was facing harsh criticism for being too conservative. Hooks began revitalizing the image of the organization and repairing its finances.

As executive director of the NAACP, Hooks led the organization to involvement in national issues such as health care, urban poverty, and the criminal justice system. He formed alliances between the NAACP and corporations, foundations, and businesses. In 1978, he secured enough votes for the passage of the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act, which aimed to reduce unemployment. Under his guidance, the NAACP encouraged the United States to withdraw its investments from South Africa to protest its apartheid policies. He also was the first African American to address both the Democratic and Republican National conventions, which he did in 1980.

In addition to maintaining the NAACP’s involvement in political affairs, Hooks also guided the organization toward providing support and assistance for ordinary people. In 1986, he received the highest honor bestowed by the organization, the Spingarn Medal. In 1993, Hooks resigned from his position as executive director.

After he left his post atop the NAACP, Hooks returned to the ministry and served as an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Memphis. In 1996, the university created the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change. Hooks was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. He died in Memphis on April 15, 2010.

Significance

Hooks’s long and wide-ranging career was driven by his passion for social justice and African American uplift. He had a major impact on his Memphis community and the nation as a whole in his roles as minister, lawyer, judge, government official, activist, and college professor. He worked cooperatively with white leaders to bring about change and brought the NAACP into a new era of social activism that engaged issues tangential to race such as poverty, employment, and health care.

Bibliography

Hooks, Benjamin L., and Jerry Guess. The March for Civil Rights: The Benjamin Hooks Story. Chicago: American Bar Association, 2003. In this memoir, Hooks recounts his career journey in pursuit of racial equality.

Owens, William, comp. Freedom: Keys to Freedom from Twenty-one National Leaders. Foreword by Benjamin L. Hooks. Memphis, Tenn.: Main Street, 2008. Offers stories about the push for freedom in the twentieth century. Hooks’s foreword offers his thoughts on the progress African Americans made toward equality over the course of the century.

Wagner, Heather Lehr. Benjamin Hooks. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. In this biography, the author emphasizes Hooks’s childhood and the factors in his life that led him to a career in defending civil rights.

Weatherford, Carole Boston. “Benjamin Lawson Hooks.” In Great African American Lawyers: Raising the Bar of Freedom. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow, 2003. Biography focusing on Hooks’s legal career and its influence on his civil rights activism.