John Jay Hooker

John Jay Hooker, Jr. (born 1930) is a Nashville, Tennessee attorney, entrepreneur, perennial candidate and political gadfly.

Legal Career

After finishing high school at Nashville's prestigious Montgomery Bell Academy, Hooker attended college at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He then served two years in the United States Army Judge Advocate General Corps as an investigator. Upon discharge from the service, Hooker attended the Vanderbilt University Law School. He graduated and was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1957. He then practiced law with his father in the law firm of Hooker, Keeble, Dotson, and Harris, one of the most prominent law firms in Tennessee. In 1960, Mr. Hooker left his father's law firm to start a new law firm and one year later was joined by his brother Henry Hooker, and two years later by William R. Willis and they formed the law firm of Hooker, Hooker, and Willis which became a ten man law firm. This firm became the general counsel of the Nashville Tennessean and several other businesses by the time Hooker ran for governor in 1966. Struck by the inequalities in the southern society that confronted him at the time, he became identified as a young man with progressive Democratic politics. While practicing law, he also began a series of diverse business investments.

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In 1958, .Governor of Tennessee, Frank G. Clement, asked Mr. Hooker and Mr. Jack Norman Sr. to become involved in the state's investigation of Raulston Schoolfield, an allegedly corrupt Chattanooga state judge. Based on the Norman/Hooker findings, the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to impeach Schoolfield. Norman and Hooker were then retained to prosecute Schoolfield before the Tennessee State Senate, which convicted him on several counts. Robert F Kennedy was then the general counsel of the labor sub-committee known as the McClellan committee which investigated labor corruption and in that regard investigated Raulston Schoolfield. Mr. Kennedy came to Tennessee and testified in the Schoolfield impeachment trial. Thereafter, he and Mr. Hooker became close friends and remained so until the time of his death in 1968.

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