Fair Housing Month: Remembering Rev. Benjamin L. Hooks

On April 15, Rev. Benjamin L. Hooks passed away at age 85, leaving behind a legacy of civil rights achievements that spanned a six-decade career.

Among other accomplishments, Rev. Hooks became the first black judge to sit on the bench of a Tennessee state court since Reconstruction. He was also the first black commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, and he served for 15 years as the executive director of the NAACP. More recently, in 2007, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush.

Rev. Hooks' passing in the middle of Fair Housing Month is interesting, considering how much he contributed to fighting housing discrimination across the United States. According to a press release from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Rev. Hooks helped achieve several key legislative successes while serving as chair, among them the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988, which strengthened fair housing enforcement and added disability and familial status as protected classes.

Return tomorrow for the nineteenth part of this special "Fair Housing Month" feature at Fairhousingblog.com.