John Jay Hooker

Hooker was a direct descendant of William Blount, who signed the Constitution of the United States and who was appointed by President George Washington in 1790 to be the "Governor of all the lands south of the Ohio River".

In 1796, Governor Blount was elected the president of the Constitutional Convention of Tennessee.

Hooker attended Sewanee Military Academy (now St. Andrew's-Sewanee School) and graduated from Nashville's Montgomery Bell Academy.

Hooker attended college at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

He then served two years in the United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corps as an investigator.

Upon discharge from the service, Hooker attended Vanderbilt University Law School.

John Jay Hooker, Jr. (August 24, 1930 – January 24, 2016) was an American attorney, entrepreneur, political gadfly and perennial candidate from Nashville, Tennessee, who was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Tennessee in 1970 and 1998.

John Jay Hooker was born to relative wealth in one of the Nashville area's more prominent families in 1930.

His father, John Jay Hooker, Sr., was an attorney, as is John Jay's brother, Henry Hooker, who became his law partner in the former firm of Hooker, Hooker, and Willis.

He graduated and was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1957.

He then practiced law with his father in the law firm of Hooker, Keeble, Dodson, and Harris, one of the most prominent law firms in Tennessee.

In 1958, Tennessee Governor Frank G. Clement asked Hooker and prominent Nashville attorney Jack Norman Sr. to become involved in the state's investigation of Raulston Schoolfield, an allegedly corrupt Chattanooga state judge.

Based on the Norman/Hooker findings, the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to impeach Schoolfield.

Norman and Hooker were then retained to prosecute Schoolfield before the Tennessee State Senate, which convicted him on several counts.

At the time, Robert F. Kennedy was general counsel of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, which was investigating labor corruption.

In this capacity, Kennedy launched an investigation of Raulston Schoolfield.

Kennedy came to Tennessee and testified in the Schoolfield impeachment trial.

In 1959, Hooker married the former Eugenia "Tish" Fort.

They had three children, Dara, Kendall, and Blount, who was named after William Blount; he also had a son by a second marriage, James Thomas Lovell.

Fort family members were co-founders along with other families of the former National Life and Accident Insurance Company and its subsidiaries, WSM radio and the Grand Ole Opry country music program.

Hooker also was close friends with Amon Evans, whose family then owned and published The Tennessean.

Thereafter, Hooker convinced Evans to employ John Seigenthaler as the editor of the newspaper.

Seigenthaler likewise had an association with Robert F. Kennedy that emanated from the Schoolfield investigation and trial.

Thereafter, Seigenthaler was a major political supporter of Robert Kennedy and of Hooker.

In 1960, Hooker left his father's law firm to start a new law firm and one year later was joined by his brother Henry Hooker, and two years later by William R. Willis, forming the law firm of Hooker, Hooker, and Willis, which eventually became a ten-man law firm.

This firm became the general counsel of the Nashville Tennessean and several other businesses by the time Hooker ran for governor in 1966.

Struck by the inequalities in the southern society that confronted him at the time, he became identified as a young man with progressive Democratic politics.

While practicing law, he also began a series of diverse business investments.

With the support and backing of the Evans family and John Seigenthaler, Hooker decided to enter the 1966 Democratic primary for governor of Tennessee.

His opponent was Buford Ellington, a former governor attempting a return to the office who had the strong backing of the incumbent governor, Clement, and President Lyndon Johnson, who was Ellington's close personal friend and who had appointed him to a prominent position at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Ellington was also strongly backed by the other Nashville newspaper, the Nashville Banner.

Supported by some of the more progressive members of the Nashville business community and using innovative advertising such as sponsoring NASCAR driver Buddy Baker's racecar, Hooker underwent a blistering counterattack which was mounted by Ellington's "Old Guard" supporters.

Hooker ran fairly well in the urban and rural areas but lost badly in the suburbs, to which the Old Guard's support had largely moved in the post-World War II era.

Ellington went on to an easy victory in November, with no Republican opposition, the last time such a circumstance was to occur in Tennessee.

Thereafter, he and Hooker became close friends and remained so until the time of Kennedy's assassination in 1968.

During the next four years, Hooker divided his time between two major activities – investments and planning to run for governor again in 1970.

By this time Hooker had many diversified investments including Whale Inc. and a chain of fried chicken restaurants with country comedian Minnie Pearl and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

His rationale for the chicken restaurants was just as Pepsi had long made a large amount of money as the primary competitor to Coca-Cola, someone else stood to make a comparable fortune as the primary competitor to Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Hooker was also closely involved around the same time with the Frist family and others in the formation of what became the first major for-profit healthcare chain, the Hospital Corporation of America.

Hooker won the 1970 Democratic nomination for governor of Tennessee over a host of competitors, most notably the candidate of the "Old Guard", Nashville attorney Stan Snodgrass, who had the endorsement of the Nashville Banner.