| Benjamin
Hooks, retired director of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP), will be the featured
speaker at Berea College’s annual Founders Day Celebration
Thursday, October 25, at 3:00 p.m. in Phelps Stokes Chapel.
Hooks, along with 10 family members, will accept the 2001 John
G. Fee Award, honoring Hooks’ grandmother, Julia Britton
Hooks, an 1874 alumna and early Berea faculty member.
The John G. Fee Award, given posthumously, honors alumni of
1866-1904 who gave distinguished service to their community,
especially in the field of education, and whose lives reflect
the ideals of Berea founder Rev. John G. Fee, expressed in the
College’s motto, “God has made of one blood all peoples
of the earth.”
Berea President Larry D. Shinn will present awards to the Hooks
family members. Designed and handcrafted by Berea College Woodcraft
and local artist Ken Gastineau, the award is a walnut box with
a cast-bronze medallion featuring the African "sankofa," a
symbol of the importance of retrieving and understanding one's
heritage.
Julia Ann Britton Hooks (1852-1942) attended Berea from 1870-74.
Born in Frankfort, Ky., she was a musical prodigy who began playing
piano publicly at age five, and at age 18 became the first African-American
on Berea's faculty, teaching instrumental music from 1870-72.
She eventually moved to Memphis where she married Charles Hooks,
and there founded the Hooks School of Music, teaching harmony
to composer W. C. Handy, and opened the Hooks Cottage School
in her home. She also founded an Orphans and Old Folks Home,
partially funded through her benefit concerts. Her concern for
all people in need in the city of Memphis earned her the title "The
Angel of Beale Street." Julia Hooks was a charter member
(1909) of the NAACP, the world's largest and oldest civil rights
organization.
Benjamin L. Hooks, grandson of Julia Britton Hooks, is a distinguished
professor of political science at the University of Memphis.
A leader of the civil rights movement, he served as national
executive director of the NAACP from 1977-92. He was the first
African-American elected to a judgeship in Tennessee and the
first appointed to the Federal Communications Commission.
Berea College was established in 1855 when abolitionist Rev.
John G. Fee began what would become the first school in the South
to admit blacks and whites, men and women, on an equal basis.
Fee's founding visioncharacterized Berea until 1904, when Kentucky
enacted the Day Law prohibiting integrated classrooms in the
state's schools. Not until 1950, when the law was amended, was
Berea able to resume admitting African American students.
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