Olivia Hooker, 1915–2018 The race riot survivor who bore witness

Olivia Hooker was 6 years old when a gang of torch-wielding white men smashed their way into her family’s home in Tulsa. It was May 31, 1921, and white mobs had gone on the rampage in the affluent African-American neighborhood of Greenwood after a black teen was falsely accused of attacking a white woman. Hooker hid under a dining table with her mother and three siblings as the men smashed their piano and stole their valuables. Outside, black people were shot dead in the street and homes and businesses were set ablaze. Forty blocks were destroyed and up to 300 African-Americans killed. “It took me a long time to get over my nightmares,” Hooker said. She would recover—and thrive. Hooker was the first black woman to serve in the Coast Guard, and later became a distinguished psychology professor. All the while, she remained an outspoken witness to one of the deadliest single episodes of racial violence in U.S. history, which she referred to simply as “The Catastrophe.”

Hooker was born in Muskogee, Okla., and as a child moved to Greenwood—“known as the Black Wall Street”—where her father owned a clothing store, said The Washington Post. She was stunned by the eruption of violence in 1921. “The most shocking thing,” Hooker said, was seeing people “destroy your property because they didn’t want you to have those things.” Her parents soon left Tulsa, said The New York Times, and eventually settled in Ohio. Hooker qualified as a school teacher and tried to enlist in the Navy during World War II. “Rejected for reasons never made clear to her,” Hooker instead joined the Coast Guard’s new women’s reserve in 1945 and spent a year typing discharge papers. She typed her own in 1946.

“Thanks to her GI benefits, she was able to get a masters from Columbia University,” said BBC.co.uk, “followed by a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Rochester.” Hooker joined the faculty at Fordham University and became an advocate for Americans with disabilities. Determined that the country shouldn’t forget the Tulsa massacre, she helped found the Tulsa Race Riot Commission—which sought reparations for survivors—and was still speaking to journalists at age 103. Asked what kept her going, she said simply, “It’s about what we can give to this world.”■

November 30, 2018 THE WEEK