A NATIONAL LEADER OF RESURGENCE AND ACTION : REVEREND BENJAMIN HOOKS, 1925-2010..........

More than a decade after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, many Americans thought the work of the American civil rights movement had pretty much achieved its goals. The nation's oldest civil rights organization, the N.A.A.C.P., the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples, founded in 1909, was fading and sliding into the background. Yet our country and the world still had work to do in establishing the spirit and truth of civil rights for peoples of color, but needed a new and dynamic person to lead the way. That person was the Reverend Benjamin Hooks, a Baptist minister, lawyer, jurist, and government official, who was chosen as Executive Director of the NAACP from August 1, 1977 through 1992. Born and raised in segregated Tennessee, Benjamin Hooks attended LeMoyne College in Memphis from 1941-43; and graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., with a Bachelor of Arts degree, in 1944. He attended DePaul University Law School in Chicago, obtaining his law degree in 1948, because no law school in Tennessee was admitting black studentts at that time. Practicing law in Memphis for sixteen years from 1949-1965, he was ordained a Baptist minister in the mid 1950's and soon joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s, Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Becoming an eloquent preacher in churches in Memphis and Detroit, he gained a mighty following for his public speaking. Serving as an Assistant Public Defender, from 1961, in 1965 he was the first black judge appointed to the Shelby County Tennessee Criminal Court, where he presided for three years. In 1972, President Richard Nixon appointed him as the first black member of the Federal Communications Commission, where for five years he advocated strongly about th underrepresentation of minority ownership of the media. That led to his selection in 1977, as the successor to Roy Wilkins, to lead the NAACP through the late 70's to the early 90's, during which he was a powerful voice for affirmative action and strengthening minority voter registration. His leadership and steadfast advocacy accomplished a reinvigoration of an organization thought to be at its nadir, when Reverend Hooks became the NAACP Executive Director. In 2007, he was awarded the Medal Of Freedom, by President George W. Bush. The Reverend Benjamin Hooks died on Thursday April 15, age 85, in the Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, where funeral services will be held next Wednesday April 21. May He Rest In Peace..........Fr. Troy