CIVIL RIGHTS ICON: BENJAMIN HOOKS DIES

Benjamin L. Hooks, a civil rights leader who led the NAACP from 1977 to 1992, has died, said Leila McDowell, the vice president for communication at the NAACP.

The cause of death was not immediately known, McDowell said Thursday.

Hooks was "a vocal campaigner for civil rights in the United States," said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

He was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1925 and grew up in the segregated South.

Hooks served in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he "found himself in the humiliating position of guarding Italian prisoners of war who were allowed to eat in restaurants that were off limits to him. The experience helped to deepen his resolve to do something about bigotry in the South," according to a biography published by the University of Memphis, where he was a professor in the political science department.

He also was a lawyer and an ordained Baptist minister who joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and led the NAACP for 15 years.