"Benjamin L. Hooks, Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 85"

Benjamin L. Hooks, Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 85
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: April 15, 2010

Benjamin L. Hooks, a golden-tongued orator who led of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for 16 years, died Thursday at the age of 85.State Rep. Ulysses Jones, a member of the church where Mr. Hooks was pastor, said the civil rights leader died at his home in Memphis, following a long illness, The Associated Press reported.

While best known for leading the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights group, Mr. Hooks had a varied career that bridged the often disparate worlds of black and white America. He was a Baptist minister who headed two churches. He was a lawyer and a criminal court judge — the first black to be appointed to the bench in his native Tennessee. He was the first of his race to be named to the five-member Federal Communications Commission. And he was a businessman who years ago owned several fried chicken franchises in Memphis.

“He’s had an amazing career,” said Julian Bond, a former head of the Atlanta branch of the N.A.A.C.P., “judge, F.C.C. commissioner, minister of churches in two different cities at the same time, businessman, head of the N.A.A.C.P. Most people do one or two things in their lifetimes. He’s just done an awful lot.”

He was also an inspirational leader whose oratory was reminiscent of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which had Mr. Hooks as one of its board members. Mixing quotations from Shakespeare or Keats with the cadence and idioms of his native Mississippi Delta, Mr. Hooks’ speeches thrilled his largely black following.

“There is a beauty in it and a power in it,” Mr. Hooks once said of his and other black preachers’ speaking style.

In 2007, President George W. Bush presented Mr. Hooks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the country’s highest civilian honors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/us/16hooks.html