After receiving his BS degree in art education from Tennessee State University in 1973, Hooker traveled across town to George Peabody/Vanderbilt University where he completed his Master of Arts degree in Studio Painting and Design in 1974. While teaching in the Department of Art at Tennessee State University during the 1974-75 academic school year, Hooker was influenced by Dr. Herman Beasley and Dr. Jacqueline Bontemp to go back to Graduate School and work toward a doctoral degree in art.

In the fall of 1975, he received a doctoral fellowship to attend Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. In 1977, at the age of 24, Hooker received the Doctor of Education degree (Ed.D.) in Art Education from Illinois State University. In 1982, Dr. Hooker participated in an art research project in Paris, which was sponsored by the Atlanta University Center and conducted at the Sorbonne, the Louvre Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the George Pompidou National Center of Art and Culture. While doing research in Paris, France with art historians Dr. Lee Ransaw, Dr. Roosevelt Lenard and Dr. Luke Shaw, Dr. Hooker became fascinated with various European artists who used blacks as subject matter in their art compositions. Of special interest were the works of renowned artist Pablo Picasso. Some of Picasso’s sculpture was influenced by primitive African symbolism. Impressed with symbolic images of Africa, Dr. Hooker feels that “ethnic art is the splendid quality that has given us the power to prevail with the strength, dignity and grace.”