A native of Birmingham, Alabama, his father died when he was a very young child and his mother was a schoolteacher and later a principal. His mother remarried a man who had a dry-cleaning plant and a drugstore.
As a child, Hobson worked at a public library, where he could clean the floors but he was not allowed to borrow books, but he still manged to read a lot og books about abolitionist John Brown, who he said was the greatest and most under-appreciated American in history.
After graduating from high school he briefly attended Tuskegee Institute, but during World War Two he was drafted and served in the Army in Europe where he was awarded three bronze stars for his many missions as a pilot.
After returning from the war, Hobson graduated from Tuskegee Institute and moved to Harlem, New York and enrolled in Columbia University, but dropped out after a few months. In 1946, he moved to Washington, DC and graduated from Howard University with a degree in economics.
In 1981, The Washington Post revealed that documents in the Federal Bureau of Investigation file on Hobson revealed that he had once provided information to the FBI about the black freedom movement.
It reported that there were 29 reports over a five-year period during which Hobson gave information to agents.
The file indicates, among other things, that Hobson gave the FBI information on advanced planning for the historic March on Washington led by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 and was paid $100 to $300 in expenses to monitor and report on civil rights demonstration plans at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.
He also reported on a 1965 meeting in Detroit involving a revolutionary black group and on another occasion warned agents of possible violence at a Philadelphia demonstration that same year.
An FBI agent met with Hobson once or twice a month from about 1961 to late 1964 to discuss and assess potentially violent or disruptive demonstrations, organizations and individuals in the civil rights movement. In 1995, in the book Hoover's FBI: The Inside Story by Hoover's Trusted Lieutenant author Cartha DeLoach described Hobson as a paid FBI informant.
After experiencing persistent back pain, Hobson was diagnosed with a form of cancer of the spine called multiple myeloma In 1971. He later learned he also had acute leukemia and died from it at George Washington University Hospital on March 23, 1977.
All that is interesting, but what was really cool about Hobson was his solution to the rat problem in the predominately black areas of Washington, DC.
In August of 1964, he was seen driving through downtown Washington, DC with a cage full of enormous rats strapped to the roof of his station wagon.
He was frustrated by the city government’s refusal to do anything about the rat problem in the poorer areas of the city and the District’s more affluent citizens’ apathy about the issue.
He was aware that a problem in Washington wasn't a problem until it affected rich white folks so he decided to make it one. It was Hobson's belief that if the poorer and predominately black areas had rat problems then the affluent Georgetown should share it too. And so, he caught large, "possum-sized rats" and transported them to Georgetown where he threatened to release a cage full of them in the middle of the wealthy district unless the city government acted to curb the epidemic.
Every Saturday, Hobson would have almost a dozen huge rats on top of his car, hosting “rat rallies" where he would loudly reiterate his threats. He claimed to have a rat farm somewhere in the city where he and his associates had chicken coops full of rats which they vowed to release unless the government implemented rat extermination programs that would reach outside of rich white neighborhoods. He had also promised to dump a truck load of rats in front of the White House.
Hobson had done his research and found he had no legal obligation to keep the rats once he caught them, so he could not be prosecuted for following through on his threat.
Many of city officials and Congressmen lived in Georgetown and his threats created a panic that got results. The city set up rat control programs for the poorer neighborhoods.
And those rats? In reality they were disposed of by drowning them in the Potomac River. And, it's reported that at the most, all he ever had was 10-12 rats at a time.
That wasn't Hobson's only threat. At one time he threatened to shut down a section of highway that had numerous segregated restaurants with massive protests, when in reality he had only a handful of people.
Another time he made the preposterous claim that he had a long-range microphone on his car and he was going to following police cars around and catch them in the act of committing brutality against minorities. He later admitted that the microphone only had a range of a few feet, but in those days the threat was enough to cause some changes to be made in police department policies.
The man knew how to get things done in Washington!
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