Benjamin Hooks Attorney, Civil Rights Activist, Baptist Minister

Sunday, April 25th, 2010 @ 1:53 pm | We Think

“A young black man can’t understand what it means to have something he’s never been denied. I can’t make them understand the mental relief I feel at the rights we have. It almost infuriates me that people don’t understand what integration has done for this country.”
~ the late Benjamin Hooks in an interview with
U.S. News & World Report~

Benjamin Lawson Hooks was a son of the American South. He was born in 1925 in Memphis, Tennessee. During his college years at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, he became acutely aware of the fact he was forced by law to use segregated public accommodations–water fountains, lunch counters and rest rooms.

In 1944 following his graduation from Howard University in Washington, D.C. he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Assigned to the job of guarding Italian prisoners of war Hooks soon found his service to the nation while wearing the U.S. Army uniform garnered him more humiliation than respect. The P.O.W.s were permitted to eat in the very same restaurants where his presence was not allowed.

Upon receiving an honorable discharge from the service, he began his studies at the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago to study the law. At the time there was no law school in the state of Tennessee would grant admission to Hooks to attend law school. In 1948 the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago to study law. No law school in his native Tennessee would admit him. In 1948 he graduated from DePaul with his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree.

Benjamin Hooks returned to his hometown of Memphis to change the practices of segregation upheld by law in the U.S. He passed the bar exam after which he established his own law practice.

By the end of the 1940s Benjamin Hooks had built a reputation as a black attorney, one of very few, in Memphis.

Over the years Benjamin Hooks granted interviews to many publications to chronicle his experience of the the Jim Crow era Southern United States. In an interview with Jet Magazine he described what it was like to practice law in segregated Memphis at the time:

“At that time you were insulted by law clerks, excluded from white bar associations and when I was in court, I was lucky to be called Ben. Usually it was just ‘boy.’ [But] the judges were always fair. The discrimination of those days has changed and, today, the South is ahead of the North in many respects in civil rights progress.”

He met Frances Dancy who became his wife in 1952. in 1956 because he believe he was called to the ministry he became an ordained Baptist minister. Earlier in his life as a younger man he wanted to study theology; his father dissuaded him from doing so.

Rev. Hooks became a close friend and an associate of another southern leader Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard, M.D. Dr. T.R.M. Howard was a surgeon as well as the head of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a leading civil rights organization in Mississippi.

As he continued with his busy law practice as he began preaching in Memphis and increased his civil rights activism by joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as well as his participation in the boycotts of consumer goods and services along with his pioneering participation in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP), sponsored restaurant sit-ins.

Rev. Hooks ran for public office in Tennessee in 1954, 1959 and 1963. By 1965 because of his winning personality and determination he had the support of white liberals as well as blacks statewide. In fact he was appointed by the governor of Tennessee to fill an open position on the judicial bench in the Shelby County criminal court.
Governor Frank G. Clement’s selection and appointment of Hooks made history. Benjamin Hooks became the first black criminal court judge in Tennessee. Although this position was temporary expiring in 1966, Benjamin Hooks went on to successfully campaign for a full term in the same judicial post.

By the end of the 1960s Benjamin Hooks was renown as businessman, judge, lawyer and minister. He asked his wife of then thirty years to be hands close advisor, assistant and traveling companion. Hooks was regularly a speaker at the Greater New Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan as well as an active participant in the protests and marches for the NAACP.

Benjamin Hooks was the television host and producer of several programs seen on Memphis’ local television. In 1972 because of his strong support for Republican candidates President Richard M. Nixon selected Hooks to be a member of the five member Federal Communications Commission (FCC). After confirmation by the U.S. Senate Benjamin Hooks and his wife Frances moved to Washington, D.C.

As a member of the FCC Hooks addressed the scarcity of minority ownership of television and radio outlets as well as, the minority employment statistics for the broadcasting industry, and the manner in which black African Americans are portrayed in the mass media. Hooks continued to work for black involvement in the media and entertainment industries even after he completed his five-year term on the board of the FCC.

Benjamin Hooks was elected, by the 64-member board of directors of the NAACP, to become the executive director of the association. He held this leadership position until 1992 when he tendered his resignation.

In 1980 Benjamin Hooks gave the justification for the NAACP’s support for non-violent action saying:

“There are a lot of ways an oppressed people can rise. One way to rise is to study, to be smarter than your oppressor. The concept of rising against oppression through physical contact is stupid and self-defeating. It exalts brawn over brain. And the most enduring contributions made to civilization have not been made by brawn, they have been made by brain.”

In his remarks acknowledging the death at age 85, of Benjamin Hooks, a man who is one of an incredible generation of Americans who changed the world, President Barack Obama said,

“Our national life is richer for the time Dr. Hooks spent on this earth. And our union is more perfect for the way he spent it: Giving a voice to the voiceless.”