Frances Hooks Biography Favorites Time of Year Spring

Educator, consultant, Frances Louise Dancy Hooks was born February 23, 1927 in Memphis Tennessee. Her parents, Georgia Harriet Graves Dancy and Andrew Jackson Dancy raised her on Edith Street in Memphis. Hooks attended St. Anthony La Rose Elementary School and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School where Hooks was sophomore class president in 1944. She attended Howard, Fisk and Wilberforce Universities graduating in 1949.

Hooks taught second grade in a Shelby County, Tennessee Rosenwald School. She met Benjamin Hooks at the Tri-State Fair, and they were married in 1951. In 1956, the Hooks desegregated the all white Parkway East community. Hooks put her career as a teacher and guidance counselor on hold in the late 1960s to support the activities her husband, Benjamin Hooks who by then was a businessman, lawyer, judge and minister. Hooks became his assistant, secretary advisor and traveling companion. Moving to Washington, D.C. in 1972, Hooks helped her husband become the first black appointee to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

In 1977, when her husband became executive director of the NAACP, Hooks organized the NAACP women by creating Women in the NAACP (WIN), which she formed in 1980 with Earleen Bolden. WIN raised money for emergency relief by putting on fashion shows and social events. She also co-founded The People Power Project, which promotes black and white dialog and the Memphis Volunteer Placement Program, which is now run by the Rotary Club.

Renewing their vows in 2001, Hooks and her husband have one daughter, Patricia.


Hooks was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on July 13, 2005.