Hoke Norris

Who is Hoke Norris?

Hoke Marion Norris was a Chicago journalist whose reporting during the Civil Rights Movement had a significant impact on popular opinion in Chicago. Born in 1913 in Holly Springs, North Carolina, he studied journalism at Wake Forest College. He married Edna Dees Rackley Norris and had one child, Marion Dees Norris. His first journalism job was writing for the Daily Advance in Elizabeth City, NC, which he left to write for the Raleigh News and Observer. He then worked for the Associated Press before joining the Army Air Force. When his tour of duty ended, he returned to AP.

After studying on fellowship at Harvard University in 1955, Norris became a reporter and editor at the Chicago Sun-Times. Although he was literary editor, he took on a news reporter role during the Civil Rights Movement, and sent dispatches from the South. During the 1970s, he taught and was an administrator at the University of Chicago and was on the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune.

Norris’s literary career included the novels All the Kingdoms of the Earth and It’s Not Far But I Don’t Know the Way, and the collection of essays We Dissent.

Hoke Norris died in 1977.