The group organized student volunteers to work with white churches across northwest Indiana in an attempt to build connections across the divide of racial segregation.
[2] He graduated from Purdue University in 1945 with a Bachelor of Science, then spent a year at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois studying liberal arts in order to balance his science-heavy background.
Hood Sr. joined other local churches, labor groups, and civil rights organizations to protest this displacement of majority-black communities, launching a movement that would be some of the first substantial resistance to "slum clearance" policies in the United States.
In 1961 he formed the Fellowship of Urban Renewal Churches, which anchored a successful opposition to the Miriani administration and helped lead to a historic upset in the 1962 election of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh.
Hood's leadership, Plymouth Congregational Church created an active housing ministry and went on to purchase nearly fifty acres of "urban renewal" land.
[1] He insisted on depositing funds for this initiative in a black-owned bank, which helped avoid the rampant discrimination in mortgage lending.
A new church was built and plans were made for new housing developments, including accessible options for seniors and people with disabilities.
Hood and a coalition of physicians used anti-discrimination requirements attached to urban-renewal land purchases to block the hospitals from expanding until they agreed to hire black doctors.
[2] As the only black member of the city council during the riot of 1967, Hood found himself in a highly visible position that he has called a "focal point," asked frequently to meet with the governor and mayor for strategy sessions that he later described as "[not] much strategizing, other than to try to keep the troops that they brought in from going berserk.
[5] Hood was recognized by the city of Detroit later that year with an honorary street naming at St. Antoine and Canfield St., near Plymouth United Church of Christ and in front of one of the housing complexes he fought to build in the 1960s.
[14] Speakers at the dedication ceremony included SCLC leader Dr. Charles Steele, City Council president Brenda Jones, and Senator Carl Levin.