Benjamin Hooks

Benjamin Lawson Hooks was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 31, 1925. With a grandmother who was the second African American woman to get a college degree in the United States, he grew up understanding the importance of education. After graduating from his segregated high school, Benjamin Hooks attended LeMoyne College, then transferred to Howard University.

During World War II, Hooks left his studies behind to join the U.S. Army. While working as a guard, he saw that his Italian prisoners were able to eat in restaurants that refused to admit black service members, a fact that made him determined to work for desegregation. After being discharged, he went to DePaul University's law school in Chicago, graduating in 1948.

Hooks set up shop as a lawyer in his hometown of Memphis, where members of the legal establishment treated him with disrespect. Still determined to fight against segregation, he also got involved with sit-ins and boycotts. He became a Baptist minister in 1956, and soon joined the executive board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization led by Martin Luther King Jr.

After becoming a public defender for Tennessee's Shelby County in 1961, Hooks represented defendants in civil rights cases. The work meant he had to face angry opponents of the Civil Rights Movement. Hooks was driven out of one town by shotgun-wielding sheriffs.

In 1965, the changes the Civil Rights Movement had made led to a big shift in Hooks' own life. He was appointed to be a criminal judge, a first for an African American in Tennessee. He was elected for a full judicial term the next year. During this time, he continued to minister at two churches, one in Memphis and the other in Detroit.

Hooks left the bench in 1968 to be the president of Mahalia Jackson Chicken Systems, a company that was owned and operated by African Americans. Unfortunately, the business went under a few years later. He was then selected by President Richard Nixon to join the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1972, making him the first African American commissioner. While with the FCC, Hooks supported initiatives that helped build minority ownership of television and radio stations.

Hooks left the FCC in order to become executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1977. During his time with the NAACP (1977 – 1993), he improved the organization's finances and increased its membership rolls. He also successfully worked for improved job opportunities for minorities and the creation of a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr.

At the age of 85, Hooks died in Memphis on April 15, 2010. Before his death, he had received many accolades, such as the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, awarded in 1986, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, given by President George W. Bush in 2007.