Civil Rights Leader Long Led NAACP

Benjamin Hooks 1925-2010

He was fond of describing himself as "a poor little ol' country preacher," but that belied Benjamin Hooks's formidable advocacy as head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People during the 1980s and '90s.

Mr. Hooks, who died Thursday at age 85, brought substantial rhetorical skills to bear in advocating a Martin Luther King national holiday, sanctions on South Africa and fighting what the NAACP saw as rollbacks of the civil rights gains of the 1960s in the more conservative political times of presidents Reagan and Bush.

"He fought tirelessly to tear down walls that make today's bridges possible," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said.

Among Mr. Hooks's professions was country preacher, and at his death he was pastor emeritus of Greater Middle Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn. But he was also a lawyer, public defender, judge, fried-chicken company executive and a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission in a career spent pushing the boundaries for what an African-American could achieve.

Mr. Hooks resigned as an FCC commissioner in 1977 to become executive director of the NAACP. It was a chaotic period for the civil-rights group, which was indebted and facing a declining membership.

"The civil rights movement is not dead," he said in a 1977 speech. "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."

Mr. Hooks stabilized the NAACP's finances and membership, but was faced in his 15 years with repeated clashes with the board over issues of strategy and programs.

Under Mr. Hooks's leadership, the NAACP reached out to black prisoners, parolees and to students. But some criticized him for failing to make the group seem relevant to the young, who he thought didn't appreciate the strides made in civil rights. Mr. Hooks, a veteran of lunch counter sit-down protests of the 1950s, told U.S. News and World Report in 1991, "I have to begin at the fundamental issue that I can drive from Houston to my home in Memphis and stop for a hamburger."

Raised in Memphis, where his father ran a photography business, Mr. Hooks aspired to be a Baptist minister. But his father was not a fan of organized religion, and Mr. Hooks opted instead to study law. He returned from World War II having served in a still-segregated Army, earned a law degree at Chicago's DePaul University, and returned to Memphis determined "to be part of the crowd to break up the segregation of the South," as he told the New York Times in 1979. Conditions for a black lawyer in the South were anything but welcoming.

"At that time you were insulted by law clerks, excluded from white bar associations," he told Jet magazine in 1972. "I was lucky to be called 'Ben.' Usually it was just 'boy.' "

Mr. Hooks was ordained a minister in 1956, and became part of the leadership of Mr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He rose quickly to become one of the first criminal-court judges in the South in 1965.

Appointed by President Richard Nixon to the FCC in 1972, he called for more positive black role models on TV. But he surprised some observers by supporting the right to free speech in the case of a political advertisement in a Georgia Senate race that used a racial epithet. And years later, he came out against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

REMEMBRANCES - APRIL 16, 2010

By Stephen Miller

—Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A6