Published: April 15, 2010
Benjamin L. Hooks, Minister and
Civil Rights Leader Passes at 85
Benjamin L. Hooks
EXODUS News – Benjamin L. Hooks, minister, attorney and defender of civil rights passed Thursday, April 15, 2010 while suffering an illness. To many in the African community Hooks will be well known as a good and honest man who fought for his Lord and Savior.
Hooks was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1925. He had a fun childhood being the fifth of seven children in his family. Education was important to the Hooks family and not being one to disappoint, he followed the family tradition.
Hooks went to college graduating from Howard University. Hooks joined the Army in 1944 and was assigned to guard Italian prisoners of war. He found it humiliating that the prisoners of war were able to eat inside restaurants and use facilities he was denied access. Young Hooks, suffering from the humiliation of these circumstances, would find the cause defining the life he would lead.
After serving in the Army he went to DePaul University and obtained his law degree. Hooks used his degree to fight racial injustice in the south. He also helped Thurgood Marshall in winning the Brown vs. Board of Education case.
Hooks became a Baptist minister in 1956, preaching at the Greater Middle Baptist Church in Memphis. Rev. Martin Luther King, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, asked Hooks to join the board.
In 1972, President Nixon appointed Hooks to the F.C.C. He was the first African American F.C.C. commissioner. At the F.C.C. he tried to expand opportunities to minorities in media by bringing down loan restrictions.
Hooks was elected to the Board of Directors of the NAACP in 1976. Under his leadership the membership of the NAACP soared. The NAACP re-ignited itself as the leading voice in the continuing struggle for civil rights.
He led the NAACP through the difficult years of the Ronald Reagan presidency. Reagan slashed federal funding for minority and public programs and used his presidency as a bully pit against minorities. During these times Reagan gave racist conservatives a justification to dislike and or ignore minorities and the working poor, white or black.
The Reagan years deeply concerned Hooks as to what should be done in navigating the civil rights movement through troubled waters. Hooks made the decision to bring the NAACP closer to American corporations to replace the funding that had been taken away by Reagan, and his influence on other whites. This decision created tension for Hooks among the leadership of the NAACP.
During this struggle Hooks was made a target by racists who were bombing the homes of civil rights leaders. Hooks met with President George H.W. Bush about racial tensions in the United States and also voiced concern over the government’s lack of support for public education and the poor.
In 1992 Hooks resigned from the NAACP after a battle with the board.
In 1996 Hooks established the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis. Hooks went back to his love of preaching the Gospel at the church where he started as a minister in 1956.
Hooks will be remembered as a giant in the civil rights movement and as a man who fought the good fight.
Click Here to email this page to a friend |
