Attorney Benjamin Lawson Hooks (born 1925) was the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served from 1972 to 1977 as the first African American commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. He led the historic prayer vigil in Washington DC in 1979 against the Mott anti-busing amendment which was eventually defeated in Congress.

Benjamin Lawson Hooks, the fifth of seven children, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1925 to Robert B. and Bessie Hooks. Hooks' family was relatively prosperous because, in 1907, his father and uncle established a successful photography business that was widely patronized by the Memphis African-American community. Because the society was so rigidly segregated along racial lines at that time, many establishments would not serve African Americans. Consequently, numerous African American-owned businesses were founded in the South to meet the needs of the African American populace. His grandmother, a musician who graduated from Berea College in Kentucky, was the second African American female college graduate in the nation. With such evidence of success and hard work as his personal examples, Hooks was encouraged to do well in his studies and prepare for higher education.

Following the Depression of 1929, changes occurred in the Hooks family's standard of living. With money so scarce during those years, African American clients could rarely afford the luxury of wedding pictures or family portraits, so business came to a virtual standstill. They were sad days indeed when the lights were turned out in the Hooks' home and when the bank foreclosed on the mortgage. Still, the family always had clothing and shelter, and no one ever went hungry. In the years after the Depression the family business revived and even several decades later, after his father's death, one of Hooks' brothers continued to maintain it. Perhaps because of the rigors of business life and social prominence in the African American community, Hooks' parents were careful to see that all of their children were conscientious about their appearance, attitude, and academic performance. Hooks learned discipline from his parents' teaching and example.

After completing high school, Hooks decided to remain in Memphis to study pre-law at LeMoyne College. He successfully completed that program and then headed for Italy, where he served in the army during World War II guarding Italian prisoners of war. He felt humiliated that these prisoners were allowed to eat in restaurants that were off limits to him, and that in Memphis, they would have more rights than he. The experience deepened his resolve to do something about the bigotry in the South. When he returned to the United States, he continued his studies at Howard University. From there he went to Chicago where he attended DePaul University Law School - since no law school in the South would admit him. Although he could have established a law practice in Chicago when he graduated in 1948, he chose to return to Memphis to aid in the struggle for civil rights in the South. From 1949 to 1965 he practiced law in Memphis, as one of the few African American lawyers in town.. He recalled in Jetmagazine "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 of civil rights progress."

In 1949, Hooks met a 24 year old teacher named Frances Dancy, whom he met at the Shelby County Fair. In 1952 they were married. Frances Hooks recalled in Ebony magazine that her husband was "good-looking, very quiet very intelligent. … He loved to go around to churches and that type of thing, so I started going with him. He was really a good catch."

For years Hooks resisted the call to the gospel ministry. His father had little respect for organized religion, and Hooks had no urge to go against his father's wishes. However, in 1955 he began to preach, and in 1956 he was ordained a Baptist minister. He joined Reverend Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He pastored a church in Memphis and one in Detroit at the same time. Hooks, a man of many talents, was not content with his two chosen professions. His interest in business prompted him to become a bank director, the co-founder of a life insurance company, and the founder of an unsuccessful fried-chicken franchise. After several attempts to be elected to public office as a Republican candidate, his political ambitions were realized when he was appointed to serve as a criminal judge in Shelby County (Memphis) in 1965. He thus became the first African American criminal court judge in Tennessee history. The following year he was elected to the same position.

No matter how busy he was with his varied activities, Hooks always found time to take part in civil rights protests. He became a life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served on the board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He was a pioneer in the NAACP-sponsored restaurant sit-ins and other boycotts that demonstrated the economic power as well as the anger of the African American community against the discrimination that was so pervasive at the time. In spite of his shyness he became a proficient orator whose combination of quick wit and homespun humor delighted audiences. He used this ability as the moderator of television shows called Conversations in Black and White and Forty Percent Speak (the percent of the African American population of Memphis) and as a panelist on the program What Is Your Faith?

Federal Communications Commissioner

Hooks was so often in the public eye that it is not surprising that Tennessee Senator Howard Baker submitted his name to President Richard M. Nixon for political appointment. While he was campaigning, Nixon had promised African American voters that he would see that they were treated fairly by the broadcast media. Thus, in 1972 when there was a vacancy on the seven-member board of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Hooks was named to fill it. Although Hooks was not the choice of the most articulate African American groups, including the Black Congressional Caucus, the great majority acquiesced gracefully to his appointment. Benjamin and Frances Hooks soon moved to Washington, D.C. Fortunately for Hooks, his wife matched him in energy, stamina and ambition. She often served as his assistant, secretary, advisor, and traveling companion, even though it meant that her own distinguished career as a teacher and guidance counselor was sacrificed. She told Ebony magazine, "He said he needed me to help him. Few husbands tell their wives that they need them after thirty years of marriage, so I gave it up and here I am. Right by his side."

The new position at the FCC gave Hooks a real opportunity to effectuate change in the roles of minorities in the entire broadcast industry. The FCC was responsible for granting licenses to television, radio, and cable television stations and for regulating long distance telephone, telegraph, and satellite communications systems. Hooks felt that his primary role was to bring a minority point of view to the commission. He stated that although he had been nominated by the president, he represented the interests of African Americans, the largest minority in the nation. Hooks was appalled to find that only three percent of those employed by the FCC were African American people, and they were generally in low-paying positions. He encouraged the commission to hire more African American workers at all levels. By the time that he left FCC, African Americans constituted about 11 percent of the employee population. Hooks made a concerted effort during his years as a commissioner to see that African Americans were fairly treated in news coverage and to urge public television stations to be more responsive to the needs of African American viewers by including historical and cultural programming directed toward them.

National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People

After serving on the FCC for five years, Hooks was asked to be the executive director of the NAACP, the organization which had formed the vanguard of civil rights advocacy from the beginning of the 20th century. Roy Wilkins, who had held the director's position since 1955, was retiring, and the NAACP board of directors wanted an able leader to take his place. They unanimously agreed that Hooks was the man. He resigned from the commission and officially began his directorship on August 1, 1977.

When Hooks took over the organization, the NAACP was in financial straits and membership had dwindled from half a million to just over 200, 000. Still the NAACP had local and regional offices throughout the country. He immediately directed his attention toward rebuilding the economic base of the association through a concentrated membership drive. He also advocated increased employment opportunities for minorities and the complete removal of United States businesses from South Africa. He told Ebony magazine "Black Americans are not defeated. … The civil rights movement is not dead. If anyone thinks we are going to stop agitating, they had better think again. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop litigating, they had better close the courts. If anyone thinks we are not going to demonstrate and protest … they had better roll up the sidewalks."

Hooks' tenure at the NAACP was fraught with bitter internal controversy. He was suspended by the chair of the NAACP's board, Margaret Bush Wilson, after she accused him of mismanagement. These charges were never proven. In fact he was backed by a majority of 64 member board and continued his tenure until his retirement in 1992.

Throughout his career, Hooks has been a staunch advocate for self-help among the African American community. He urges wealthy and middle class African Americans to give time and resources to those who are less fortunate. "Its time today … to bring it out of the closet. No longer can we provide polite, explicable reasons why Black America cannot do more for itself" he told the 1990 NAACP convention as quoted by the Chicago Tribune. "I am calling for a moratorium on excuses. I challenge black America today - all of us - to set aside our alibis."

After his retirement, Hooks served as Pastor of Middle Baptist Church and president of the National Civil Rights Museum, both in Memphis. He also taught at Fisk University.

Further Reading

There is no full-length biography of Hooks. However, articles and biographical sketches are included in Ebony Success Library (1973); Ebony magazine (June 1975); Jet (December 1972); and Broadcasting (April 1972). See also Minnie Finch, The NAACP, Its Fight for Justice (1981) and Warren D. James, NAACP, Triumphs of a Pressure Group, 1909-1980 (1980).

executive director; lawyer; minister

Personal Information

Born Benjamin Lawson Hooks, January 31, 1925, in Memphis, TN; son of Robert B. (a photographer) and Bessie (White) Hooks; married Frances Dancy (a teacher), March 21, 1952; children: Patricia.
Education: Attended LeMoyne College, 1941-43, and Howard University, 1943-44; DePaul University, J.D., 1948.
Religion: Baptist.
Military/Wartime Service: U.S. Army; served in World War II; became staff sergeant.
Memberships: American Bar Association, National Bar Association, Tennessee Bar Association, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Tennessee Council on Human Relations.

Career

Ordained Baptist minister; lawyer in Memphis, TN, 1949-65 and 1968-72; assistant public defender, 1961-64; judge in Division IV Criminal Court of Shelby County, TN, 1966-68; pastor of Middle Baptist Church, Memphis, 1956-64, and Greater New Mount Moriah Baptist Church, Detroit, MI, 1964-72; Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC, member, 1972-78; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Baltimore, MD, executive director, 1977-93. Vice-president of Mutual Federal Savings and Loan Association, Memphis, 1955-69. Producer and host of television programs, including Conversations in Black and White, Forty Percent Speaks, and What Is Your Faith.

Life's Work

For 15 years Benjamin L. Hooks presided over America's largest and most influential organization for blacks, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Founded around the turn of the twentieth century, the NAACP was suffering from declining membership and prestige when Hooks assumed his role as executive director. Under his leadership, the organization has rebounded, adding several hundred thousand new members to its ranks. Hooks, himself an ordained Baptist minister and a practicing attorney, told the New York Daily News that he hopes to keep the NAACP vital by addressing many national issues from a minority perspective. "I think you will find us dealing with issues that are not always perceived as concerns of the NAACP," he said. "We will take stands ... on the environment, ecology, and energy ... the problems of the cities, national health insurance, welfare, {and} the criminal justice system."

Hooks kept his promise. After he became executive director in 1977, the NAACP issued formal opinions on topics as diverse as the lack of black executives in Hollywood, the role of the black middle class in the improvement of life in the ghettos, and the 1991 nomination and confirmation of Judge Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Arizona Republic correspondent Ben Cole wrote: "Often in the past, Benjamin Hooks's words have been heeded by his fellow Americans and have been turned into national policies that have benefitted the whole society." For his own part, Hooks saw the need for more work. "It is a sad commentary on our times that blatant appeals to race still can divide us when so many urgent problems beset our nation," he said in the Houston Post. "It is also deeply disappointing that President Bush, for whom blacks and other minorities entertained so much hope and respect after eight disastrous years of Reaganism, appears to be following his predecessor's philosophy."

Benjamin Hooks is no stranger to racism and civil rights violations. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1925, the fifth of seven children of Robert B. and Bessie Hooks. Although his family was comfortable by so-called black standards--his father owned a photography studio--Hooks can recall wearing hand-me-down clothes and watching his mother stretch the groceries so everyone had enough to eat. Hooks's parents were both hard-working people, and his grandmother was the second black woman in the United States to graduate from college--Berea College in Kentucky. Therefore he was encouraged to do well in his studies and to prepare for higher education.

As a young man Hooks was drawn to the ministry, although he was very shy. His father actively discouraged the calling, however, so Hooks enrolled in a pre-law course of studies at LeMoyne College in Memphis. By that time he could already add his name to the legion of black Americans who were tired of being forced to use segregated bathrooms, lunch counters, water fountains, and other public facilities. "I wish I could tell you every time I was on the highway and couldn't use a restroom," he said in U.S. News and World Report. "My bladder is messed up because of that. Stomach is messed up from eating cold sandwiches."

During the Second World War, Hooks even found himself in the humiliating position of guarding Italian prisoners of war who were allowed to eat in restaurants that were off limits to him. The experience helped to deepen his resolve to do something about bigotry in the South. After his wartime service--he was promoted to the rank of staff sergeant--Hooks went north to Chicago to study law at DePaul University. No law school in his native Tennessee would admit him.

Hooks earned his J.D. degree in 1948 and promptly returned to Memphis, vowing to help break down segregation. He passed the Tennessee Bar examination and opened up his own law practice, confronting prejudice at every turn. "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,'" he remembered in Jet magazine. "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."

By 1949 Hooks had earned a local reputation as one of the few black lawyers in Memphis. At the Shelby County fair, he met a pretty 24-year-old teacher named Frances Dancy. They began to date, and after a few months they became inseparable. They were married in Memphis in 1952. Mrs. Hooks recalled in Ebony magazine that her husband was "good looking, very quiet, very intelligent." She added: "He loved to go around to churches and that type of thing, so I started going with him. He was really a good catch."

Indeed, Hooks still felt a calling to the ministry, especially after he joined renowned civil rights activist and reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Hooks was ordained a Baptist minister and began to preach regularly at the Middle Baptist Church in Memphis in 1956. He also became a pioneer in the NAACP-sponsored restaurant sit-ins and other boycotts of consumer items and services. He entered state politics, making unsuccessful bids for the state legislature in 1954 and for juvenile court judge in 1959 and 1963. Despite his losses, the personable young Hooks attracted not only black voters but liberal whites as well. By 1965 he was well enough known that Tennessee governor Frank G. Clement appointed him to fill a vacancy in the Shelby County criminal court. He thus became the first black criminal court judge in Tennessee history. The following year he won election to a full term in the office.

By the late 1960s Hooks was spread thin as a judge, a businessman, a lawyer, and a minister. Twice a month he flew to Detroit and preached at the Greater New Mount Moriah Baptist Church. He also made himself available to the NAACP as needed for civil rights protests and marches. Fortunately for Hooks, he had married a woman who matched him in energy and stamina. Frances Hooks became her husband's assistant, secretary, advisor, and traveling companion, even though it meant sacrificing her own distinguished career as a teacher and guidance counselor. "He said he needed me to help him," Mrs. Hooks told Ebony. "Few husbands tell their wives that they need them after 30 years of marriage, so I gave it up and here I am. Right by his side."

Side by side, Benjamin and Frances Hooks moved to Washington, D.C. in 1972, when Hooks became the first black appointee to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Hooks had been a producer and host of several local television shows in Memphis--in addition to his other duties--but it was his support of the Republican ticket that endeared him to Richard Nixon. As a member of the FCC, Hooks addressed the lack of minority ownership of television and radio stations, the minority employment statistics for the broadcasting industry, and the image of blacks in the mass media. While Hooks was with the FCC, minority employment in broadcasting rose from three percent to fifteen percent. Hooks has continued to fight for black involvement in the entertainment industry, even though he left the FCC in 1978.

On November 6, 1976, the 64-member board of directors of the NAACP elected Hooks executive director of the renowned civil rights organization. Founded in 1909 after a series of brutal lynchings in the South, the NAACP had earned a significant reputation as the history-making civil rights group. During its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s it had numbered almost half a million members, but in the late 1970s the membership had declined to near 200,000. Hooks was determined to add to the enrollment and to raise money for the organization's severely depleted treasury, without changing the NAACP's goals or mandates. "Black Americans are not defeated," he told Ebony soon after his formal induction in 1977. "The civil rights movement is not dead. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop agitating, they had better think again. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop litigating, they had better close the courts. If anyone thinks that we are not going to demonstrate and protest ... they had better roll up the sidewalks."

In Hooks's early years he weathered some bitter storms with Margaret Bush Wilson, chair of the NAACP's board of directors. At one point in 1983, Wilson summarily suspended Hooks after the two quarreled about organizational policy. Wilson accused Hooks of mismanagement, but the charges were never proven. In fact, a majority of the 64-member board backed Hooks, and he never officially left his post. He has been secure as the executive director ever since and has overseen the organization's positions on affirmative action, federal aid to cities, foreign relations with repressive governments such as that in South Africa, and domestic policy decisions of every sort. Hooks likes to call himself "just a poor little ol' country preacher," but his modesty hardly hides his long list of sophisticated accomplishments.

Early in 1990 Hooks and his family were among the targets in a wave of bombings against civil rights leaders. Not for the first time, Hooks visited the White House to discuss the escalating tensions between races with President Bush. Although he emerged from that meeting with the government's full support against racially-motivated bomb attacks, Hooks remained very critical of that administration's apparent lack of action concerning inner city poverty and lack of support for public education.

On the other hand, Hooks is not about to lay all the blame for America's ills at the feet of its elected officials. He has been a staunch advocate of self-help among the black community, urging wealthy and middle-class blacks to give time and resources to those less fortunate. "It's time today ... to bring it out of the closet: No longer can we proffer polite, explicable, reasons why Black America cannot do more for itself," he told the 1990 NAACP convention delegates, as quoted in the Chicago Tribune. "I'm calling for a moratorium on excuses. I challenge black America today--all of us--to set aside our alibis."

By 1991 some younger members of the NAACP charged that Hooks had lost touch with the pulse of black America and ought to resign. Akron Beacon Journal staff writer Carole Cannon noted of the NAACP: "Critics say the organization is a dinosaur whose national leadership is still living in the glory days of the civil rights movement." Cannon went on to quote Dr. Frederick Zak, a young local NAACP president, who said: "There is a tendency by some of the older people to romanticize the struggle--especially the marching and the picketing and the boycotting and the going to jail."

For his part, Hooks feels that the perilous times of the civil rights movement should never be taken for granted, especially by those who were born in the aftermath of the movement's gains. "A young black man can't understand what it means to have something he's never been denied," Hooks told U.S. News and World Report. "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."

From the NAACP offices in Baltimore, Maryland, Hooks and his wife handled the group's business and helped to plan for its future for more than 15 years. Himself a great-grandfather, Hooks betrays his country preacher's values when he suggests that family unity is essential if black people are to partake of the American dream. Hooks told the Arizona Republic that he hopes the escalating black-on-black violence is just a "phase," a reaction to an overall violent society. He said that the solution to the current crisis in black America may lie in "a return to the kind of family values--the conventional nuclear family structure of gainfully employed parents--expressed in ... Southern Baptist morality." Hooks and his wife celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2001.

Although Hooks told the New York Times that a "sense of duty and responsibility" to the NAACP compelled him to stay in office through the 1990s, the demands of the executive director position proved too great for him. In February of 1992, at the age of 67, he announced his resignation from the post, calling it "a killing job," according to the Detroit Free Press. Hooks stated that he would serve out the 1992 year and predicted that a change in leadership would not jeopardize the NAACP's stability: "We've been through some little stormy periods before," he told the Free Press. "I think we'll overcome it."

Following his retirement he continued to provide service to the African American community by serving as senior vice-president of the Chapman Company, a minority controlled investment banking firm in Baltimore, Maryland; president of the National Civil Rights Museum at the site where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee; and Distinguished Professor of the Benjamin L. Hooks Chair for Social Justice established in 1992 at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. According to the Memphis Tri-State Defender, the chair was designed to "pass on the principles of leadership in public policy to future generations of civil rights leaders." Hooks, the chair's first occupant, served as a part-time lecturer at Fisk in the spring of 1995. His course focused on the social justice movements in the United States and was offered through both the Social Science Division and the W. E. B. Du Bois General University Honors Program. In 2000, the University of Memphis established the Benjamin Hooks Institute as a place for the study of civil rights in Memphis and the United States.

Hooks's extensive work and long hours devoted to social and cultural projects were slowed down in 1994 when he had a massive heart attack. On September 10, 1994, he underwent a quadruple heart by-pass operation in a New Orleans hospital. He suffered the heart attack while attending the National Baptist Convention in Louisiana. Despite this setback and having to cut back his workload, in a short period of time he had returned to preaching in the pulpit.

On several occasions since retiring as executive director of the NAACP, Hooks has been asked if the civil rights movement and the NAACP are alive. He has responded by saying that the movement and the NAACP are very much alive. On August 22, 1996, the Progressive National Baptist Convention presented Hooks with the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Award for his years of service to the African American Community through the NAACP. In his acceptance speech he stated that prejudice lives. He noted in the Washington Informer for August 22, 1996, that "the country seems to be having a mental relapse. There are attacks on affirmative action due to the present conservative climate in this nation. This is just one of the major problems affecting African Americans."

Although Hooks has considerably reduced his workload, he is still active in the community and the church. He currently resides in Memphis with his wife, Frances. They have a daughter, Patricia Hooks Gray. Hooks and his wife celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2001.

As executive director of the NAACP, Hooks was loyal to the basic purposes and principles of his predecessors, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and Roy Wilkins, in fighting against the entrenched Jim Crow policies during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement. Like Wilkins, Hooks was concerned with eradicating bigotry and therefore became a strong and independent leader who championed civil and human rights.

Awards

Spingarn Medal from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1986.

Further Reading

Sources

• Akron Beacon Journal, November 11, 1991.
• Arizona Republic, September 14, 1991.
• Baltimore Morning Sun, October 6, 1991.
• Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1990.
• Daily News (New York), July 31, 1977.
• Detroit Free Press, February 17, 1992.
• Ebony, November 1978; February 1981; August 1990.
• Houston Post, July 9, 1991.
• Jet, December 21, 1972; April 10, 1989; January 29, 1990; May 6, 1991.
• Memphis Business Journal, October 27, 2000.
• Newsweek, May 30, 1983; June 6, 1983; July 23, 1990.
• New York Times, December 10, 1988; July 10, 1989.
• New York Times Magazine, July 15, 1979.
• Time, November 22, 1976; May 30, 1983; June 6, 1983.
• U.S. News and World Report, July 22, 1991.
• Washington Informer, August 22, 1996.
• Washington Post, November 8, 1976.

— Mark Kram

1925–, American black leader, b. Memphis, Tenn. In 1972 President Nixon named Hooks, a lawyer and Baptist minister, to the Federal Communications Commission, making him its first black member. From 1977 to 1993 he was the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Civil rights advocate Benjamin Lawson Hooks is best known as the forceful executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1977 to 1993. Before he led the NAACP, Hooks made a virtual career out of shattering the United States' racial barriers. He was the first African American ever appointed to a Tennessee criminal court and the first African American named to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Hooks has also achieved personal and professional success as an ordained minister, a television host and producer, a savings and loan administrator, a public speaker, and a fast-food executive.

Hooks was born January 31, 1925, in Memphis. As an African American living under Jim Crow laws, he experienced the daily indignities of southern segregation. His parents, Bessie Hooks and Robert B. Hooks, Sr., raised their seven children with high moral and academic standards. After high school, Hooks enrolled at LeMoyne College, in Memphis. His college career was interrupted by World War II. Hooks was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943 and rose to the rank of staff sergeant.

After his military service, Hooks attended Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1944. Hooks then traveled to Chicago to study law at DePaul University. Although Hooks wanted to enroll in a Tennessee law school, he could not do so because law schools in Tennessee refused to admit African Americans. Hooks graduated with a doctor of laws degree from DePaul in 1948. In 1949, he moved back to Memphis and started his own law practice. In 1952, he married Frances Dancy, and later, they had one child, Patricia.

During the 1950s, Hooks became active in the growing national civil rights movement. Along with Martin Luther King, Jr., Hooks served on the Board of Directors for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. During this time, Hooks also became an ordained Baptist minister and accepted a call as pastor of the Middle Baptist Church, in Memphis. Adding to an already busy life, Hooks became vice president of a savings and loan association he helped found in Memphis in 1955.

In 1961, Hooks took over as assistant public defender of Shelby County. His role led to an appointment by Governor Frank G. Clement, of Tennessee, in 1965, to the Shelby County Criminal Court. With this appointment, Hooks became the first African American to serve as judge on the Tennessee criminal bench. In 1966, he was elected on his own to a full eight-year term. In the meantime, Hooks became minister of the Greater New Mount Moriah Baptist Church, in Detroit. He flew to Detroit twice a month to lead his congregation.

In 1968, Hooks resigned his criminal court judgeship to become president of Mahalia Jackson Chicken Systems, a fast-food franchise. In 1972, he was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon to become a member of the previously all-white FCC, the federal agency that licenses and regulates radio, television, satellite communications, telephones, and telegraph transmissions. This position allowed him to focus public attention on the image of African Americans in radio and television and to increase minority jobs in broadcasting.

In 1977, Hooks assumed the position with which he is most commonly identified: executive director of the NAACP. Following in the footsteps of the retiring Roy Wilkins, Hooks accepted the job because he deeply respected the NAACP and because he wanted to complete some of the unfinished business of the equal rights movement. A tireless worker, Hooks spent long days in the NAACP Baltimore headquarters performing what he called the "killing job."

During Hooks's tenure, the NAACP expressed concern over homelessness, drug abuse, inadequate education, and neighborhood safety. Hooks lamented the rise of an intractable urban underclass and warned that the promise of jobs and economic independence for African Americans must be met soon.

Some of Hooks's proudest accomplishments with the NAACP include his work on sanctions against South Africa, fair housing legislation, voting rights, and the Martin Luther King, Jr., federal holiday.

Hooks's achievements with the NAACP take on a special significance in view of the political conservatism that prevailed during his fifteen-year tenure as its head—a period when Ronald Reagan and George Bush were in the White House. Hooks vowed to keep the NAACP true to its progressive mission. In fact, under his leadership, the NAACP refused to endorse the nomination of African American Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court because Thomas's views were too conservative.

By the time Hooks retired from the NAACP in 1993, its membership had grown to over five hundred thousand people in over twenty-two hundred chapters across the United States. Hooks was gratified by the results of a 1992 survey in which the NAACP earned an 86 percent approval rating among those polled. The organization has worked hard to counter criticism that it is mired in the past and out of touch with African American youths.

When Hooks retired from the NAACP post in April 1993, the sixty-four members of the NAACP Board of Directors elected Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., as his successor. Hooks left the NAACP to embark on yet another career challenge—as a senior vice president at the Chapman Company, a minority controlled brokerage and investment banking firm with offices in seven cities.

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