22 Facts About Benjamin Hooks

Benjamin Lawson Hooks was an American civil rights leader and government official.

Benjamin Hooks's father was a photographer and owned a photography studio with his brother Henry, known at the time as Hooks Brothers, and the family was fairly comfortable by the standards of black people for the day.

Benjamin Hooks's father did not approve and discouraged Benjamin from such a calling.

Benjamin Hooks was a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

Benjamin Hooks found it humiliating that the prisoners were allowed to eat in restaurants from which he was barred.

Benjamin Hooks was discharged from the Army after the end of the war with the rank of staff sergeant.

Benjamin Hooks attended the RCNL's annual conferences in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi which often drew crowds of ten thousand or more.

Benjamin Hooks always felt drawn to the Christian church, and in 1956 he was ordained as a Baptist minister and began to preach regularly at the Greater Middle Baptist Church in Memphis, while continuing his busy law practice.

Benjamin Hooks became her husband's assistant, secretary, advisor, and traveling companion, even though it meant sacrificing her own career.

Benjamin Hooks had been a producer and host of several local television shows in Memphis in addition to his other duties and was a strong supporter of Republican political candidates.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon appointed Benjamin Hooks to be one of the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission.

Benjamin Hooks completed his five-year term on the board of commissioners in 1978, but he continued to work for black involvement in the entertainment industry.

Benjamin 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.

Benjamin Hooks emerged from that meeting with the government's full support against racially motivated bomb attacks, but he was very critical of the administration's apparent lack of action concerning inner city poverty and lack of support for public education.

Benjamin Hooks had 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.

Benjamin Hooks felt 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.

Benjamin 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, but eventually the demands of the executive director position proved too great for a man of his age.

Benjamin Hooks served as a distinguished adjunct professor for the Political Science department of the University of Memphis.

Benjamin Hooks resumed preaching at the Greater Middle Baptist Church in Memphis where he had begun preaching in 1956.

Benjamin Hooks's funeral was held at Temple of Deliverance Church of God in Christ on April 21,2010.

The Benjamin Hooks Institute is housed within the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Memphis.

The mission of the Benjamin Hooks Institute is teaching, studying and promoting civil rights and social change.