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Civil rights leader Benjamin Hooks dies

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

The cause of death was not immediately known, the NAACP's Leila 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.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1925, Hooks grew up in the segregated South.

Read entire article at CNN