Civil Rights Leader Rev. Benjamin L. Hooks speaker for 134th Berea College Commencement May 21

Benjamin Lawson Hooks

Dr. Daisy L. Machado

Rev. Benjamin Lawson Hooks, civil rights leader and retired executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), will speak at Berea College’s 134th Commencement on Sunday, May 21, during Berea’s 150th anniversary year.

Hooks will address an expected 227 candidates for graduation at ceremonies scheduled for 2 p.m. in Seabury Center.

Rev. Dr. Daisy L. Machado, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Lexington Theological Seminary, will be the speaker at the Sunday morning Baccalaureate Service, which will begin at 10:30 a.m. in Phelps Stokes Chapel. The day’s other public events include the Nurses Pinning Service at 9 a.m. in Union Church and a reception from 4-5 p.m. in the Old Seabury Gymnasium for graduates and guests following Commencement.

Lifelong civil rights activist Benjamin L. Hooks served as national executive director of the NAACP from 1977-92. He also was the first African-American appointed a criminal court judge in Tennessee and the first African American appointed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

A native of Memphis, Tenn., Hooks attended LeMoyne College and graduated from Howard University in 1944. After serving in the Army during WWII, he earned his law degree from DePaul University in Chicago in 1948. He returned to Memphis to set up his law practice and also became ordained as a Baptist minister, preaching in a local church.

During his early career, Hooks participated in ground-breaking NAACP restaurant sit-ins of the 1950s and 1960s as well as other boycotts, and he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. During his tenure on the FCC, Hooks addressed the low number of minority employees in the broadcasting industry, the lack of minority ownership of television and radio stations and the image of blacks in the media. During his 15 years as executive director of the NAACP, Hooks helped revive membership in the organization, which more than doubled during that time. When he retired from the position at age 67, Hooks resumed preaching in Memphis and teaching at Fisk University as a professor of social justice. He currently serves as adjunct professor in the political science department at the University of Memphis.

Hooks has received numerous awards and honorary degrees for his defense and advancement of civil rights, including the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, the Humanitarian Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum.

Benjamin Hooks was not the first in his family to be a trailblazer. His paternal grandmother, Julia Britton Hooks, earned a degree from Berea College in 1874, making her the second black woman in America to graduate from college. A musical prodigy, she was the first African American on Berea’s faculty, teaching instrumental music while she was still a student. Julia Hooks also was a charter member (1909) of the NAACP, the world’s largest and oldest civil rights organization that her grandson would later lead.

Dr. Machado, Berea’s Baccalaureate speaker, joined Lexington Theological Seminary last fall. She earned her divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and her Ph.D. in the History of Christianity and Hispanic Studies from the University of Chicago. She is an ordained Disciples of Christ minister.