Benjamin Hooks, Who Saved the NAACP
Benjamin Hooks, who became the head of the NAACP in 1977 and spent 15 years adding hundreds of thousands of members to the flagging civil rights group, has died at the age of 85.
"Black Americans are not defeated," he told Ebony magazine soon after his induction [as NAACP director]. "The civil rights movement is not dead. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop agitating, they had better think again. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop litigating, they had better close the courts. If anyone thinks that we are not going to demonstrate and protest, they had better roll up the sidewalks."
