KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Robert "Bob" Booker, one of the most influential people in the history of Knoxville integration and one of the city's greatest scholars, has passed away, according to the Beck Cultural Center President Rev. Renee Kesler. He was 88.
"It is with a heavy heart that I share the sad news of the passing of Dr. Robert J. Booker on February 22, 2024, on behalf of his family," Rev. Renee Kesler said.
Booker was known as the man who desegregated downtown Knoxville. He was also one of the leaders of the Knoxville Civil Rights Movement.
Booker was born in "The Bottom," which was the nickname for the poorest community in East Knoxville on April 14, 1935.
“My mother was a maid, sometimes a cook,” Booker said. “My father, although he wasn’t around, he worked at an auto parts place on Jackson Avenue.”
Growing up in the segregated South, Booker began to realize the reality of inequality while he was a student in grade school.
“Our teachers protected us from segregation as much as they could,” said Booker. “They would change the words in certain songs and host our own spelling bee because we couldn’t participate in the Appalachian Spelling Bee.”
At the time, Booker didn’t really know what career path he would take. But his teachers encouraged him to write.
“I started writing poems in the 4th and 5th grade,” Booker said. “I would write rhymes, and I would also write about nature. I remember a poem I wrote about a bird that could fly anywhere and be free.”
In spite of racism, segregation, and poverty, Booker would grow up to become a champion for change.
When he was 17 years old, Booker started "The Page," a student-run newspaper at Austin High School. The school later integrated with East High School to become Austin-East High School. He also gave his first public speech at a school board meeting where he called out inequalities in the local school system.
"I've a been a happy-go-lucky kid," Booker said. "But I've always been concerned with inequality."
One year after graduating from Austin High School, Booker served in the U.S. Army. That’s when he finally got a taste of the freedom he wrote about as a child.
“I spent almost three years in France and in England. For the first time in my life I was free. I could eat in any restaurant, stay in any hotel, go see any movie or any play, anywhere I wanted to go!” said Booker. “For three years, free!”
After three years of service, Booker returned to the U.S. and enrolled as a student in Knoxville College. His experiences abroad later encouraged him to pioneer a desegregation movement in Knoxville in the 1960s.
“I came back to Knoxville May of 1957, and I'm back to square one. Nothing had changed in race relations,” said Booker. “After having been free for three years, my conscience was awakened. And I said, ‘We have to do something about this.’ What it was I didn't know, until the Greensboro students showed me what we ought to be doing.”
As student body president, it was his idea to organize sit-ins in restaurants downtown in 1960.
"We began the 'sit-in' movement in downtown Knoxville, and we eventually desegregated the lunch counters and the movie theaters," Booker said.
After a month of peaceful protests, downtown lunch counters were desegregated.
Booker didn't stop there, his activism pulled him into a seat in the state legislature. When he ran in 1966, he won. Booker was the first Black state legislator from Knox County.
"I didn't realize I was making that a reputation to be in politics," Booker said. "A businessman stopped me. And he said, 'Bob, you know, they're getting ready to reapportion the state legislature. And there's a good chance a Black person can win from Knox County. And we think you're the man to do it.'"
"I had a title and I could say things that I thought needed to be said, and I thought people wouldn't listen to it. They did," Booker said.
He later served as the executive director at the Beck Cultural Center. At the time, he felt the history they displayed didn't showcase the history specific to Knoxville. Most of the history focused on Black communities in Memphis and Nashville. So, Booker said he started on a journey.
"I began writing history books and tried to document who were the people who were the movers and shakers in Knox County," Booker said.
He was a historian who sifted through newspapers, obituaries, school board minutes, city council logs, and anything else he could find to recover Black history in the region.
The former mayor of Knoxville, Madeline Rogero, gave her statement on Booker's passing:
“Bob Booker was a beloved historian who made history himself. He packed a lot of living into his 88 years – civil rights activist, military veteran, author, columnist, state legislator, mayoral aide, appointed city councilman, director of Beck Cultural Exchange Center, and more. He wanted us to know and remember and process our history -- the realities of segregated Knoxville and the fight for civil rights. And Bob loved to entertain! I always enjoyed listening to his beautiful singing voice, whether at his house parties, a special event, or a local karaoke venue (where he had a big following of folks of all ages and backgrounds). I am honored to call him my friend and grateful for the memories and legacy he has left for all of us.”
Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon said she considered him a friend.
“I was a history major in college,” said Mayor Kincannon. “And the opportunity to talk to Bob was like talking to a living monument to history when you wanted to know what was happening in Knoxville was in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. You could read a book, or you could talk to Bob Booker, if you wanted to know what 'The Bottom' was like before Urban Renewal, you could read a book or you could talk to Bob Booker who grew up there as a little kid and remembered.”
She said he put things in perspective when she spoke to him about bringing baseball back to the city.
"He talked to me a little bit about what it was like growing up here as a baseball fan, as someone who would go to the games when they were still segregated, just starting to be integrated,” said Mayor Kincannon. “It helped me understand better the importance of baseball to the history of Knoxville and what it meant to people here to have it be coming back. So he certainly gave me a lot of context."
Jimmy Duncan, the former Tennessee Congressman and the son of John James Duncan Sr., who was a former Mayor of Knoxville and a congressman, said he and his dad both shared memories with Robert Booker. He said when his father was mayor, he took Bob and another Knoxville College student to different cities to ask corporations to come to Knoxville to revitalize the economy and integrate the city.
“(They went) around to different places around the country to ask these major corporations to come into Knoxville and that really made a big difference. Knoxville had probably the most peaceful integration of any city in the country, in part because of my father and Bob Booker. And he was always a good friend to me and to my father before me, and he was a real leader in the community," Duncan said.
Sen. Richard Briggs (R - Knoxville) also said he’s sad to hear of the loss of his good friend.
“I've known Mr. Booker for a number of years. I was a big fan of his. I own all of his books. I've been down at the Beck Center when he was there. He probably got tired of me bugging him so much, we would be at Christmas dinners together and I would go and scoop people, as excited to be, next to him. And I was almost like a little kid, he would start telling the story. And when he would do his stories, it was almost like, 'Daddy, will you tell me another one?' He had so many. I read his columns religiously. Every week, he was an absolute treasure of the community. And I can tell you, the community's going to miss him and on a very personal level, I'm very, very saddened by this and I'm going to miss my good friend," he said.
Rep. Sam McKenzie (D - Knoxville) also said Booker was an icon.
“It starts very personal for me. I'm African American, representing Knox County, pretty much the same neighborhood where he was at first. And that just was his life. He was just the first and so many things, just a mountain of a man, a great human being. He really loved his community and loved people," he said. "He would have a birthday party where he would have folks come by just listen to music and join them. He just really enjoyed people and loved being a Knoxvillian."