Political leaders representing the City of Detroit, the State of Michigan and the halls of Congress reflected Monday on the life and contributions of the Rev. Nicholas Hood Sr., who served the Detroit community in the political and religious arenas for several decades.
Rev. Hood served on the Detroit City Council for 28 years, according to his biography on his church’s website, before retiring in 1993. Elected to the council in 1965, Rev. Hood worked to help economically disadvantaged, those who were discriminated against and developmentally‑disabled adults.
Rev. Hood also founded Cyprian Center in honor his daughter, Sarah Cyprian Hood, according to his biography, to help developmentally‑disabled adults. Rev. Hood has served on many governing and advisory boards including the advisory board of the Federal National Mortgage Association, the Detroit Economic Development Corp. and the Hannan Foundation.
Hood himself dealt with with a childhood spinal deformity that was corrected through extensive surgery and therapy at the Children’s Hospital of Indiana after he graduated from high school in Terre Haute, Ind., where he was the last of eight children born to Orestes and Daisy Hood, according to an an online autobiography.
He wore a steel body brace on his upper body during his freshman year at Purdue University, where he majored in biology and chemistry in preparation for entering medical school.
It was at Purdue, Hood wrote, that his career plan changed. He said he spent his spare time working with a Methodist student group on building bridges across the racial divide in rural, white churches in northwest Indiana, and he decided to make that his life work. He later spent a year studying liberal arts at North Central College in Naperville, Ill., from which he was the first African American to receive a degree. He enrolled at Yale University Divinity School in 1946 and graduated in 1949.
His first assignment was as pastor of the Central Congregational Church in New Orleans, and was one of the founding members of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. served as leader.
In 1958, Hood moved to Detroit to become senior pastor at Plymouth Congregational Church. His son, the Rev. Nicholas Hood III, is its current pastor and senior minister.
At the church, the senior Rev. Hood created a housing ministry and spearheaded the building and development of the 230-unit Medical Center Courts apartments in 1963, according to his biography. In 1975, Rev. Hood led the construction of the Medical Center Village Apartments, which consisted of 450 apartments, town homes and high‑rise building for senior citizens.
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Street sign dedication ceremony for Rev. Nicholas Hood, Sr.”,