Civil rights leader Benjamin L. Hooks, 85, who shrugged off courtroom slurs as a young lawyer before earning a pioneering judgeship and later reviving a flagging NAACP, died Thursday in Memphis after a long illness.
"Our national life is richer for the time Dr. Hooks spent on this Earth," President Obama said. "And our union is more perfect for the way he spent it: Giving a voice to the voiceless."
His inspiration to fight social injustice stemmed from his experience guarding Italian prisoners in the Army during World War II. Foreign prisoners were allowed to eat in "for whites only" restaurants while he was barred from them.
When no law school in the South would admit him, he used the GI bill to attend DePaul University in Chicago, where he earned a law degree in 1948. In 1965 he was appointed to the Tennessee Criminal Court, making him the first black judge since Reconstruction in a state trial court anywhere in the South. He also was the first black Federal Communications Commission commissioner. In 2007, President George W. Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the country's highest civilian honors.
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