Benjamin Hooks

Dr. Benjamin Lawson Hooks (b. 1925), is an American civil rights leader. A Baptist minister and practicing attorney, he served as executive director of the NAACP for from 1977 to 1992, and throughout his career has been a vocal campaigner for civil rights in the United States.

The NAACP

On November 6, 1976, the 64-member board of directors of the NAACP elected Dr. Hooks executive director of the organization. In the late 1970s the membership had declined from a high of about 500,000 to only about 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.”

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In his early years at the NAACP, Dr. Hooks had some bitter arguments with Margaret Bush Wilson, chairwoman of the NAACP’s board of directors. At one point in 1983, Wilson summarily suspended Hooks after a quarrel over the organization’s policy. Wilson accused Hooks of mismanagement but the charges were never proven. A majority of the board backed Hooks and he never officially left his post as executive director. He 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 accomplishments.

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In 1980, Benjamin Hooks explained why the NAACP was against using violence to obtain civil rights:

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:There are a lot of ways an oppressed people can rise. One way to rise is to study, to be smarter than your oppressor. The concept of rising against oppression through physical contact is stupid and self-defeating. It exalts brawn over brain. And the most enduring contributions made to civilization have not been made by brawn, they have been made by brain.

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