Dr. Benjamin Hooks

January 31, 1925 – April 15, 2010
Dr. Hooks, who led of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for 16 years, died Thursday at the age of 85.Hooks was unanimously elected president of NAACP in 1977. To take the position, Hooks resigned as a commissioner on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. He was the first black to have served as a member of the FCC. He worked to improve black’s image, and employment and ownership opportunities on radio and television.
The progressive leader of the NAACP played an important role in many battles in Washington. Amoung them is his lead in the historical Prayer Vigil in 1979, which was instrumental in defeating in Congress the Mott anti-busing amendment. He also lobbied enough votes in Congress for passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Bill.
A lawyer by profession, Hooks was the first black judge in the Shelby County Criminal Court in Tennessee. Hooks was born in Memphis to a middle-class family. He studied as LeMoyne College in Memphis and at Howard University in Washington, DC. In 1948, he received his law degree from DePaul University. “He’s had an amazing career,” said Julian Bond, a former head of the Atlanta branch of the N.A.A.C.P. “Judge, F.C.C. commissioner, minister of churches in two different cities at the same time, businessman, head of the N.A.A.C.P. Most people do one or two things in their lifetimes. He’s just done an awful lot.”Mr. Hooks was also an inspirational leader whose oratory was reminiscent of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which had Mr. Hooks as one of its board members. Mixing quotations from Shakespeare or Keats with the cadence and idioms of his native Mississippi Delta, Mr. Hooks thrilled his largely black following in his speeches. “There is a beauty in it and a power in it,” Mr. Hooks once said of his and other black preachers’ speaking style.In 2007, President George W. Bush presented Mr. Hooks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the country’s highest civilian honors.