University of Memphis

Making It Across the Bridge: Civil Rights, Social Justice, and the Life of Benjamin L. Hooks in Duty of the Hour

Posted on by Daphene R. McFerren

By Daphene R. McFerren

Duty of the Hour, a film on civil rights activist and native Memphian Benjamin L. Hooks, encourages us to ask ourselves, “To what extent are our lives today in the service of advancing a higher good for others?” The documentary chronicles the struggle for civil rights in Memphis and the nation during the 1960s and 1970s through the life of Benjamin Hooks. Hooks’ story demonstrates that civil rights activism is an undertaking not for the weak of heart, but instead a demanding endeavor requiring strong character; an ability to take, and move on from, harsh criticism; strong prayers; and a sense of optimism that universe is on your side.

Benjamin L Hooks and other civil rights activists of the 1960s were under no illusions that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s would fix hundreds of years of discriminatory practices against African Americans. While they were encouraged by gains of the Civil Rights Movement, they nonetheless remained deeply concerned about the impact of entrenched poverty and racism in American society. “The Poor People’s Campaign,” Dr. Martin Luther King’s grand scale initiative to tackle poverty in America, illustrated the pervasiveness of economic disparities even in the 1960s. Today, as well as then, poverty locks a disproportionate number of African Americans and others in a cycle of economic despair, preventing self-determination and full participation in the life of the community and nation.

CONTINUING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN TODAY’S WORLD

Benjamin L. Hooks Speaks from a Pulpit.
Benjamin L. Hooks Speaks from a Pulpit.

While clearly not our “mothers’ and fathers’ Civil Rights Movement,” in many respects the #BlackLivesMatter movement picks up where the Civil Rights Movement left off. The issue of policing in minority communities and the shocking deaths of young African American men in the last few years at the hands of the police, or in the case the death of Trayvon Martin, by a self-pointed vigilante, have rocked African American communities to their core. While #BlackLivesMatter’s most prominent issue has been excessive use, or unnecessary use, of deadly force by the police against African Americans, the movement has begun to challenge systemic issues of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination impacting African Americans. Much like the movement’s predecessors, #BlackLivesMatter challenges the strong fibers of racial inequality that run through the fabric of our nation.

As Duty of the Hour unfolds, it’s clear that Hooks, Democrats, and Republicans, worked to build bridges to ensure more inclusive and just communities. Here too is a lesson’s for today’s leaders.  While Duty of the Hour is a historical account of past events, it is also a mirror for self-examination by each of us about our “duty” to create fair and just communities for African Americans, the poor, and others in today’s world. Like the 1960s, the struggles of our time require thoughtful examination, reflection, and action within the spheres of our influence.

Benjamin L. Hooks. Photo, copyright DeSciose.
Benjamin L. Hooks. Photo, copyright DeSciose.

While much work remains to be done, Hooks and civil rights activist of his time made it across the bridge to create a more just, but still imperfect, nation. We too have a bridge to cross. Our nation faces a crisis with respect to disproportionate incarceration rates for African Americans, entrenched poverty of both black and whites, and severe class and wealth differences that negatively impact us all.  These pressing issues clearly show that we have a rough, unsteady, and difficult bridge to cross. Some, including #BlackLivesMatter, activists, and concerned others have begun the walk over the bridge. Making it across this bridge will not be easy. But again, as history makes clear, it never has been.

THE STORY OF BENJAMIN L. HOOKS

Hooks Family, ca. 1930. Benjamin Hooks, bottom row, center.
Hooks Family, ca. 1930. Benjamin Hooks, bottom row, center.

The trajectory of Benjamin L. Hooks’ life, and his impact on Memphis and the nation, could not have been fathomed at the time of his birth. Hooks was born in Memphis in 1925, a time when Jim Crow laws openly condoned segregationist and racist practices. Hooks attended LeMoyne College, now LeMoyne-Owen, and completed law school, aided in large part by the benefits he received from GI bill while serving in World War II. During the war, Hooks realized that the Italian prisoners of war whom he guarded enjoyed greater privileges as white prisoners than Hooks held as a soldier serving his country. Like other African American veterans of World War II, Hooks returned to America a changed man with a resolve to fight racial inequality.

In 1965, former Tennessee Governor Frank G. Clement appointed Hooks to serve as a criminal court judge in Memphis, making Hooks the first African American judge in a court of record in Tennessee’s history. While this appointment was life changing for Hooks, it proved to be a brave and courageous move for a white governor who, by the very act of appointing Hooks, unleashed a fury of hate upon himself from whites and members of the voluntary bar association of Memphis.

Benjamin Hooks on the FCC.
Benjamin Hooks on the FCC.

Hooks was appointed by to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by President Richard Nixon in 1972. There Hooks fought to protect First Amendment rights even in cases such speech was racially offensive. While at the FCC Hooks worked to increase minority ownership of broadcast media to ensure a diversity of voices in broadcast media.

In 1977, when Hooks became the director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Hooks held a national stage where he could advance a civil rights agenda that included combatting poverty, creating jobs and business opportunities for African Americans, and ending apartheid in South Africa.  Even after retiring from the NAACP in 1992, Hooks remained a lifetime advocate for racial equality and emphasized the urgent need for African Americans to play a pivotal role in economic life of this country.

Duty of the Hour premieres on WKNO Monday, September 12, 2016 at 7 PM; and again on WKNO-2 Tuesday, September 12, 2016 at 7 PM. To learn more about the film and the Hooks Institute, please visit www.memphis.edu/benhooks or www.memphis.edu/dutyofthehour

 

About the Author

Daphene McFerrenDaphene R. McFerren is the executive director of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change. McFerren manages the Hooks Institute’s strategic planning; program creation and implementation; local and national fundraising efforts; and work on behalf of the Hooks Institute staff, faculty, and contractors. McFerren is responsible for creating budgets for Hooks Institute programs and monitoring program expenses to ensure that financial targets are met. She is the primary media contact for the Hooks Institute and has made numerous television and radio appearances to promote its work. McFerren was the executive producer of the film Duty of the Hour, a film about the life of Dr. Benjamin L. Hooks.

The Environment of African American Education

Posted on by Jason Martin

By: Jason Martin

Most African Americans are expected to work and are not encouraged to attain higher education. W.E.B Du Bois once wrote, “Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody’s slavery.” Lack of education among African Americans has continued the cycle of oppression. Starting in the 1600s in the Virginia colonies and throughout the Antebellum period in the United States, many African Americans were lynched, lashed, or sold for attempting to obtain any kind of education. After the Civil War in the late 1800s and early to mid- 1900s, African Americans in Southern States were still largely denied access to an education due to white supremacy. When people are kept ignorant, they are easy to oppress. Slave owners applied this philosophy of tyranny to limit our ancestor’s learning and psychological process of freedom and empowerment. Today, this philosophy of tyranny through ignorance continues to exist in how we African Americans define our identities and accomplishments.

According to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) and CBS SAN FRANCISCO, young African American men are falling behind their Caucasian and Asian peers in the classroom. PBS reports only 54% of African Americans graduate from high school, compared to more than 75% of Caucasians and Asians The twelfth-grade reading scores of African Americans are currently lower than for any other racial and/or ethnic group. African American males ages 18 and older make up just 5.5% of all college students. Of the young African American males who do make it to college, only one in six will receive a college degree. If only one in six will receive a college diploma, how are the remaining five students financially supporting their families or themselves without a college degree? What will their incomes and retirement funds look like 30 years from now? “According to the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, individuals who achieve the following degree levels earn the following median annual salaries (2012 data): Ph.D. or professional degree, $96,420; masters, $63,400; bachelors, $67,140 (depending on the degree area); high school diploma, $35,170; and less than high school, $20,110. Thus, on average, bachelor’s degree holders earn about $2 million over a 30 year career, while those with advanced degrees, including masters, doctoral, and professional degrees could earn $1.9 million to $2.9 million respectively. Compare those earnings to the earnings of those with only high school diplomas, $1 million over a 30 year career, and those with less than high school, a measly $600,000 over a lifetime.[1]

Clearly, education is a requirement for a successful life. The less African Americans further their education, the more poverty they’ll experience. African Americans experience poverty at higher rates than the general population. The majority of African Americans dominant the poorest parts of America cities. Feeding American data concluded, “Twelve percent of African Americans live in deep poverty (less than 50 percent of the federal poverty threshold), compared to seven percent of all people in the United States.” Many of them are work multiple occupations for low income and have few opportunities for advancement. This cycle shall continue in African American culture until our psychological process of learning rejects the slave owners’ philosophy of tyranny that has contained us in ignorance.

Brief Bio:

Jason Martin is a sophomore at the University of Memphis. Martin is working on an undergraduate degree in Psychology and hopes to one day obtain a PhD in Therapy.  Martin is a proud member of the Hooks African American Male Initiative (HAAMI). Martin enjoys writing poetry, studying philosophy, and writing screenplays.    

 

The Hooks Institute’s blog is intended to create a space for discussions on contemporary and historical civil rights issues. The opinions expressed by Hooks Institute contributors are the opinions of the contributors themselves, and they do not necessarily reflect the position of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change or The University of Memphis.

Student submissions published on the Hooks Institute’s blog are intended to create a safe space for students to express their opinions on civil rights issues of our time. In doing so Hooks Institute student blog publications have been left largely unedited as to keep the student author’s personal voice intact. 

[1] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2015). Employment 2012 and projected 2022, by 
typicalentry-level education and training assignment. U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved 
December 7, 2015, from http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_education_summary.htm

The Benjamin Lawson Hooks Papers: An Introduction

Posted on by Will

By: Will Love

Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP, calls for blacks to ban together in their efforts to overcome racial injustices during a speech to the 69th annual convention. July 4, 1978
Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP, calls for blacks to ban together in their efforts to overcome racial injustices during a speech to the 69th annual convention. July 4, 1978

Housed in the Preservation and Special Collections Department of the University of Memphis Libraries are the Benjamin Lawson Hooks Papers (MSS 445).  By far one of the most expansive holdings of Special Collections, the Hooks papers span close to 400 boxes, containing correspondence, speeches, printed materials, administrative files, photographs, and audio and video recordings that pertain to the life of Benjamin Hooks, long time lawyer/civil rights activist and executive director of the NAACP from 1977-1992.

As a recently hired staff member of the University of Memphis Libraries, I have begun the process of digitizing major components of the Ben Hooks papers, a project sponsored by the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change.  So far, I have focused on the scanning and recording of the photograph and audio-cassette portions of the collection.  With roughly 1200 photographs and several dozen hours of audio files, the Hooks Institute, the University of Memphis Library, and I aim to make a significant sample of images and audio recordings available online for public access.  As we continue to build the Hooks digitization project website, we will also include a representative sample of scanned manuscripts to supplement the photographs and audio series.  Our aim is to demonstrate the richness of the Hooks collection so that scholars and engaged members of the public visit the Preservation and Special Collections Department to research the Hooks papers more fully.

President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Francis Hooks, and Dr. Benjamin L. Hooks in 1981.
Ben Hooks and Ronald Reagan shaking hands at the White House in 1981. This picture most likely took place weeks before Reagan gave a speech to the NAACP in Denver, CO.

The majority of the collection pertains to Hooks’ time as executive director of the NAACP from 1977-1992, as these years comprise over 90 percent of the collection.  As director, Ben Hooks gave many public speeches both to and on behalf of the NAACP, where he outlined his disagreements with the policies of President Ronald Reagan and Hooks’ concerns with the general socio-economic direction of the country.

In conjunction, Hooks also served as pastor-on-leave of Mt. Moriah Baptist church in Detroit, Michigan where he on occasion preached both to Mt. Moriah and other churches and assemblies around the country.  Hooks felt the call to ministry in his youth and was ordained as a Baptist minister in the 1950s, preaching regularly for the Greater Middle Baptist Church in Memphis before becoming a pastor in Detroit in the 1970s.

Having read through many of Hooks’ speeches and listened to many recorded sermons, one immediate observation stands out: Hooks gives an interesting look into a life of racial equality advocacy before the age of social media but after many initiatives of the 1960s civil rights era had been achieved.

A close up of Ben Hooks at a podium in 1980.
A close up of Ben Hooks at a podium in 1980.

In his sermons, Hooks was fond of quoting Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” as Hooks believed that this quotation described the life of African Americans in the 1980s.  On the one hand, Hooks was clear that African Americans had made substantial progress in the last two decades, thanks to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.  African Americans had cumulatively earned enough wealth that if they consolidated and implemented it in a focused direction, they would carry enough influence to bring even the biggest corporation to its knees.  African Americans were now mayors, police officers, judges, and business owners in numbers unprecedented in American History.

On the other hand, Hooks believed that the African American community was in a greater crisis now than any other time in history.  He often made pointed jokes of African Americans “tithing to the local liquor store” and stark remarks about the level of violence prevalent in many African American neighborhoods, noting that the number of African American men murdered by other other African American men was far greater than the number of African American men lynched in the early twentieth-century South.   The remedy for this problem was not government intervention (though Hooks as NAACP director tirelessly advocated for the prolonging of targeted programs) but rather a revival within the African American community, centered on the church and the family.

Ben Hooks and Senator Edward Kennedy, 1972.
Ben Hooks and Senator Edward Kennedy at the 23rd NAACP membership luncheon.

Hooks, thus, demonstrates the changing nature of rhetoric throughout the history of civil rights.  Hooks, at times, sounds like an affirmative action minded civil rights activist, calling Reagan and other conservatives to task over slashing publicly funded programs designed to create opportunities for the poor.  In Hooks’ view, Reagan’s policies would not engender equal prosperity for all Americans but in fact, stimulate wealth redistribution from the poor to the rich, destroying the progress achieved over the last two decades.  At other times, Hooks sounds like a modern social conservative, noting the central role of the church, the family, and the responsibility of the individual to correct his or her own problems, regardless of prevailing societal ills.

Ben Hooks 1978
Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP, tells a Portland news conference Friday that his organization had a very successful convention. He added that the NAACP will continue to fight for racial equality on all fronts. July 7, 1978

Much of Hooks’ mixed messaging can be attributed to varying audiences.  When preaching to a predominantly African American congregation, he sounds quite differently than when speaking to a national audience on behalf of the NAACP.  But, I suspect, much of it also stems from a time period when an individual as prominent as Hooks could easily find a media platform for his initiatives without worrying over the “viral” tendencies of today’s hyper charged social media exchanges.  Hooks could craft political messages and rhetorical strategies designed to make the nightly news and morning newspapers without worry that a misinterpreted statement would spread around the internet in moments.  In this regard, Hooks’ tenure with the NAACP represents a transitional moment in the history of the civil rights movement, and while it shares many differences with our current struggles, it perhaps has more in common with our own struggles than did the marches and protests of the 1960s.

 

All photographs pictured are the property of Special Collections, 
the University of Memphis Libraries.