Excerpts from Selected Library Guides and Exhibitions

Wayne State University Library Guide

https://guides.lib.wayne.edu/c.php?g=1148627&p=8420077

Library of Congress: Laura Smalley Interview

• Born into slavery, on a plantation in Hempstead, TX, Ms. Smalley discusses her story, the Civil War, and emanipation.

The White House: A Proclamation on Day Of Remembrance: 100 Years After The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

• "NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 31, 2021, a Day of Remembrance: 100 Years After The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. I call upon the people of the United States to commemorate the tremendous loss of life and security that occurred over those 2 days in 1921, to celebrate the bravery and resilience of those who survived and sought to rebuild their lives again, and commit together to eradicate systemic racism and help to rebuild communities and lives that have been destroyed by it".

Lone Star College-University Park • Research Guide  | Tulsa Massacre (many sources)

https://upresearch.lonestar.edu/tulsa-1921

Walter F. White: “The Eruption of Tulsa,” 1921

• Full text of article by Walter F. White, appearing in The Nation magazine on July 29, 1921.

•  "A hysterical white girl related that a nineteen-year old colored boy attempted to assault her in the public elevator of a public office building of a thriving town of 100,000 in open daylight. Without pausing to find whether or not the story was true, without bothering with the slight detail of investigating the character of the woman who made the outcry (as a matter of fact, she was of exceedingly doubtful reputation), a mob of 100-per-cent Americans set forth on a wild rampage that cost the lives of fifty white men; of between 150 and 200 colored men, women and children; the destruction by fire of $1,500,000 worth of property; the looting of many homes; and everlasting damage to the reputation of the city of Tulsa and the State of Oklahoma."

Tulsa-Greenwood Race Riot Claims Accountability Act of 2007 (Congressional Hearing)

• "To provide a mechanism for a determination on the merits of the claims brought by survivors and descendants of the victims of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, Race Riot of 1921 but who were denied that determination."

Hearings on the Ku Klux Klan, 1921

• Hearings before the Committee on Rules, House of Representatives, 67th Congress, first session.

Countering Domestic Terrorism: Examining the Evolving Threat (S. Hrg. 116-154)

• Hearing before the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Sixteenth Congress, First Session, September 25, 2019

ADDITIONAL SOURCES

National Endowment for the Humanities, 1921 Tulsa Massacre. TheZinnEdProject; Investopedia; National Endowment for the Humanities; archival documents OSU; Tulsa Historical Society; Harvard Gazette; National Museum of African American History & Culture, Educator Tools | DBQProject, Chronology | Tulsa Library

Profile Olivia Hooker | U.S. National Park Service

National Park Service| nps.gov People Profile

Significance: first Black woman in Coast Guard active duty; Tulsa race massacre survivor; psychologist and professor

Place of Birth: Muskogee, OK, Feb 12, 1915

Place of Death: White Plains, NY, Nov 21, 2018

Place of Burial:  White Plains, NY, White Plains Rural Cemetery

Dr. Olivia J. Hooker, a survivor of the Tulsa race massacre, blazed a trail as the first Black woman on active duty in the US Coast Guard.

Early Life & Tulsa Race Massacre

Olivia Hooker was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1915. When she was a child, she and her family moved fifty miles away to Tulsa. The city was rigidly segregated, but many Black residents managed to carve out prosperous lives for themselves despite discrimination. Hooker’s father owned a clothing store in the affluent Greenwood District, sometimes known as America’s “Black Wall Street.”[1]

In 1921, when Hooker was six years old, white supremacist rhetoric boiled over into vicious violence. Enraged by false rumors that a local Black man had assaulted a white woman, white mobs invaded the Greenwood neighborhood. Arsonists torched homes, businesses, churches, and schools. Members of the mob shot indiscriminately at residents. At least dozens – likely hundreds – of Black Tulsans died. Nearly 10,000 were left homeless.

Hooker and her family were at home when intruders carrying torches entered their backyard. In an interview with NPR, she remembered her mother hiding her and her siblings under the dining room table and warning them to stay silent. “It was a horrifying thing for a little girl who’s only six years old,” she said, “trying to remember to keep quiet, so they wouldn’t know we were there.”[3] The men destroyed the family record player and butchered the piano with an ax. The mob also burned her father’s store to the ground. They reduced most of the businesses and homes in the neighborhood to rubble.

Like tens of thousands of other Black Tulsans, the Hooker family left the city soon after the massacre. They moved to Topeka, Kansas and then to Ohio. Hooker earned a BA at Ohio State University and began working as a teacher. She told NPR that her parents urged her and her siblings to avoid “agonizing over the past” and instead “look forward and think how we could make things better.” [4]

SPARS [Coast Guard] Service

During World War II, the US military began opening its ranks to women for the first time. However, most branches refused to accept Black women.

It took dedicated campaigns from Black activists to end this discrimination.

 [which Zionists call reverse discrimination per their support of Ken Marcus nominee to roll back civil rights and promote Zionist hegemony]

When the Navy’s WAVES program finally opened to Black enlistees in 1944, Hooker applied several times. But the WAVES turned her down due to a “technicality” that they did not explain.

Instead, Hooker decided to try the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve, better known as the SPARS. In a 2013 interview, she recalled that the SPARS recruiter was “just so welcoming, she wanted to be the first one to enroll an African American.”[5]

On March 9, 1945, Hooker became the first Black SPAR on active duty. Along with four other Black women, she completed boot camp at the Coast Guard’s training center in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. She went on to further training as a yeoman, or administrative specialist. After finishing yeoman school, however, Hooker faced additional obstacles. The head of the school wrote to every Coast Guard station commander—there were 11—to find an assignment for her. Only one, in Boston, agreed to take a Black yeoman.[6]

At her post in Boston, Hooker worked in the separation center, processing paperwork for those who were discharging from the service. While she was there, the war ended. The SPARS—approved for the “duration [of the war] plus six months”—prepared to disband. “I think I was the last one out because I had to type my own discharge,” Hooker recalled. She left the SPARS having been promoted to yeoman 2nd class.

Asked about her SPARS service in 2013, Hooker reflected:

“I would like to see more of us realize that our country needs us, and I’d like to see more girls consider spending some time in the military, if they don’t have a job at all and they have ambition, and they don’t know what heights they might reach. It’s really nice to have people with different points of view and different kinds of upbringing. The world would really prosper from more of that.”[8]

Psychologist

After leaving the SPARS, Hooker used her GI Bill benefits to go back to school. She earned an MA from Teachers College at Columbia University and a PhD in psychology from the University of Rochester. She specialized in working with children with developmental disabilities.

Hooker taught at Fordham University in New York City from 1963 until 1985. She then worked at the Fred S. Keller School, a preschool and early intervention program.

She retired in 2002, at the age of 87. Hooker co-founded a division of the American Psychological Association (APA) dedicated to intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The APA honored her with a Presidential Citation in 2011.

Later Life & Honors

Throughout her life, Hooker shared her memories of the Tulsa race massacre and advocated for justice for its victims.

In the immediate aftermath, white city officials buried evidence of the massacre. [just as israelis routinely have done since 1947]

No one was charged, and most victims received no compensation from their insurance companies. Hooker co-founded the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission in 1997 to unearth the buried evidence of the massacre. She also pressed for reparations for Black Tulsans. She joined a lawsuit against the state and testified before Congress in 2005 and 2007. In the 2020s, victims and their descendants continue to seek acknowledgement and financial compensation for the massacre.

In 2015, the Coast Guard recognized Hooker by renaming a training facility and a dining hall in her honor. Hooker died in 2018 at the age of 103.

Notes

[1] The Greenwood Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 26, 2022.

[2] Sources differ on the number of casualties. Official records from 1921 confirm only 35-40 deaths. However, activist Walter White visited Tulsa shortly after the massacre and guessed that between 150-200 Black and about 50 white residents were dead. The 2001 commission to study the massacre estimated that the death toll was between 150 and 300. See 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre - Tulsa Historical Society & Museum (tulsahistory.org). 

[3] Nellie Gilles, “Meet the Last Surviving Witness to the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921,” National Public Radio, May 31, 2018. Meet The Last Surviving Witness To The Tulsa Race Riot Of 1921 : Code Switch : NPR

[4] Gilles, "Meet the Last Surviving Witness to the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921." 

[5] Olivia Hooker interview with Ali Flockerzi, Coast Guard Compass, Oct. 29, 2013, 1:02-1:11. 

[6] Olivia Hooker interview, 2:16-2:36. 

[7] Olivia Hooker interview, 3:35 – 3:43.

[8] Olivia Hooker interview, 4:16 – 5:05.

Sources

Genzlinger, Neil. “Olivia Hooker, 103, Dies; Witness to an Ugly Moment in History.” New York Times, Nov. 23, 2018. Olivia Hooker, 103, Dies; Witness to an Ugly Moment in History - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Flockerzi, Ali. “Olivia Hooker: A SPAR’s Story.” Coast Guard Compass, Oct. 29, 2013. Olivia Hooker: A SPAR’s Story « Coast Guard Compass (archive.org)

Gilles, Nellie. “Meet the Last Surviving Witness to the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.” National Public Radio, May 31, 2018. Meet The Last Surviving Witness To The Tulsa Race Riot Of 1921 : Code Switch : NPR

MacKay, Jenna. “Olivia Hooker (b. 1915),” Society for the Psychology of Women, American Psychological Association. Olivia Hooker (b. 1915) (apadivisions.org)

McCarthy, Lauren. “Court Ruling Revives Reparations Claim Filed by Tulsa Massacre Survivors.” New York Times, Aug. 16, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/us/tulsa-race-massacre-lawsuit-appeal.html

“People & Stories Oral history Project: Dr. Olivia J. Hooker.” White Plains Public Library, September 2015. People & Stories Oral History Project: Dr. Olivia J. Hooker | White Plains Public Library (whiteplainslibrary.org)

Porter, Janis and Olivia Hooker. “Olivia J. Hooker, Pioneer and First Black Woman in the Coast Guard.” StoryCorps.org, Feb. 28, 2020. Olivia J. Hooker, Pioneer and First Black Woman in the Coast Guard – StoryCorps

“The memories of what happened to us then will never go away.” Rochester Women, University of Rochester, Feb. 28, 2020. ‘The memories of what happened to us then will never go away’ : News Center (rochester.edu)

Article by Ella Wagner, PhD, Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education. This article was funded by the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the National Park Service.

Source: nps

2020June25 New Amsterdam News | Dr. Olivia Hooker, first Black woman in the Coast Guard, eyewitness to Tulsa Massacre

by Herb Boyd June 25, 2020 | New Amsterdam News

Trump’s disaster in Tulsa presents us an opportunity to discuss the city’s race riot of 1921 when countless number of African Americans were killed and the Greenwood District, or “Black Wall Street,” was destroyed. Last week we featured the life and legacy of the Rev. Jack Yates, especially the high school named after him which George Floyd attended. The Rev. Yates, as we noted, was among the foremost leaders promoting Juneteenth Day, and the convergence of that celebration with Trump’s appearance in Tulsa, and the massacre there, evokes the memory of Dr. Olivia Hooker.

[ACTIVE IN HER 80s--Takes on Massacre]

Dr. Hooker was in her eighties when she began to seriously research and to ensure the legacy of the massacre, one she witnessed. If most Americans are ignorant of Juneteenth, they are even less aware of the death and destruction that took place in Tulsa in 1921.

[BIO OF SURVIVOR]

Born February 12, 1915 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Hooker grew up in Tulsa where her father owned a clothing store in the prosperous Greenwood district, which is a little less than a mile from the Bok Center where Trump held his rally. She was six years old when a white mob was formed to avenge an alleged assault on a white woman in an elevator by a Black man. Hooker said she hid under a dining room table with her four siblings when members of the mob invaded their home and destroyed practically everything of value.

The Hooker’s store was just one of the buildings and property leveled during the riot, leaving Greenwood like a bomb had been dropped on it, and in several accounts an actual gasoline bomb was dropped that led to an inferno of flames.

[ADVOCATING FOR EQUALITY IN ARMED SERVICES]

Having survived the massacre, the Hooker family moved to Columbus, Ohio. While a student at Ohio State University, Olivia was among activists who campaigned for Black women to have the same opportunities given to white women in the military. Her application to join the Navy was rejected several times. Eventually, a Coast Guard recruiter convinced her to join SPAR, a women’s reserve program of the Coast Guard.

For a little over a year in 1945 to 1946 she was a member of SPAR before it was disbanded. Her assignment was mainly a lot of paperwork, she said, but, “It taught me a lot about order and priorities,” she told a Coast Guard publication. In this capacity, she was the first African American woman to actively serve in the Coast Guard.

[PURSUIT OF HIGHER EDUCATION]

Armed with GI benefits, Olivia enrolled at Teachers College, Columbia University where she earned a master’s degree in psychological services. This was followed by a brief stint working with female prisoners with developmental disabilities. Her interest in mental health led her to the University of Rochester and under the guidance of Emory Cohen she earned a Ph.D. in Primary Mental Health with a special emphasis on children with Down syndrome.

[TEACHING CAREER]

Dr. Hooker taught at Fordham University from 1963 to 1985, and she was lauded for her dedication to students of color. “Following her ‘retirement,’ she was working harder than ever to ensure the field of psychology and federal, state, and local agencies were inclusive and working toward the benefit of all peoples,” Celia Fisher, the Marie Ward Doty University chair in Ethics at Fordham, told Fordham News in 2018.

After her tenure at Fordham ended, Hooker spent a decade at the Fred Keller School of Behavioral Analysis. Here she continued her work on developmental disabilities in children. In 2002, at 87, she “retired” once more.

THIRD RETIREMENT JOB-TULSA MASSACRE

Three years later she began a more serious inquiry in the Tulsa massacre, going against her parents’ admonitions about agonizing over the past. Soon, she was a foremost spokesperson on the Tulsa riot and helped to form the Tulsa Race Riot Commission in the late 1990s. When the late attorney Johnnie Cochran and Charles Ogletree sought a way to ground their pursuit of reparations for Black Americans, they secured Dr. Hooker, thereby giving them a living witness to the tragedy.

Still full of vigor and insight, even in her 90s, Dr. Hooker was often called on to recount the massacre, and there was even an appearance to testify before a congressional subcommittee in 2007. Eight years later, in 2015, the Coast Guard named a dining center and a training facility in her honor. One of her dreams was achieved in 2018 when the Tulsa Race Riot Commission was renamed Tulsa Race Massacre Commission.

She was 103 when she died in White Plains, New York in 2018.

Here are portions of Dr. Hooker’s prepared statement at the congressional subcommittee in 2007:

“At the time of the riot, I lived on Independence Street in the Greenwood District of Tulsa with my parents and four siblings. At the time of the riot, my parents owned a home on Independence Street valued at $10,000 and a clothing store at 123 North Greenwood Avenue that was one of the most prominent stores in Greenwood. My home was severely damaged but not destroyed in the riot, however, the mob completely destroyed my parents’ business, which was described as ‘a total loss.’

Furnishings valued at $3000 were either stolen or deliberately smashed or destroyed. Jewelry valued at $1000, furs valued at $1000, and silver valued at $500 were also stolen.

The estimated total loss of goods displayed at the store was $100,000.

That makes a total loss of $104,000 to our parents during that riot.

  [equivalent to $1.8 million in present value according to the inflation calculator at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve]

My parents were distraught over the loss of the many beautiful things they had purchased with their hard-earned money. The mobs hacked up our furniture with axes and set fire to my grandmother’s bed and sewing machine. I still remember the sound of gunfire raining down on my home and that the mob burned all my doll’s clothes.”

From <https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2020/06/25/dr-olivia-hooker-first-black-woman-coast-guard-eye/>

Journalist Herb Boyd - Legendary writer in New York journalism community

https://pen.org/user/herb-boyd/

https://muckrack.com/herb-boyd/articles

https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/08/28/herb-boyd-a-lifetime-of-activism-writing-and-legacy/

https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/profiles/herb-boyd

https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/studiotulsa/2017-09-13/another-view-of-the-tulsa-race-riot-a-lecture-here-at-tu-by-herb-boyd

https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/people/rich-fisher

hboyd@ccny.cuny.edu

support@publicmediatulsa.org

rich-fisher@publicmediatulsa.org