Dr. Olivia Hooker, 96, is a brilliant, beautiful woman. She is also a survivor of the Tulsa, Okla. race riots of 1921. Last Wednesday, City Councilmember Charles Barron and the members of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus honored the New York resident in a Seated Meeting at City Hall. In a modest ceremony, Hooker accepted a proclamation as a survivor of the vicious racist attacks on the community of Greenwood, fondly referred to as the “Black Wall Street.”
Independent and highly efficient, the community had thrived as a center for innovative business and Black wealth. Thousands of African-Americans inhabited the town, contributing to the various businesses, restaurants, churches and schools that they themselves built and cultivated.
And then, in less than a day, the entire community was destroyed. Gunshot sprayed the streets and businesses were set ablaze. It was not just organized white groups that attacked–it was ordinary people, fearful of the power that “Negroes” were accumulating. Whites raised their artillery against the Blacks in this town and succeeded in silencing the riots the Blacks held in opposition.
Published reports of the number of people who died that night range from 300 to 3,000, but what is indisputable is the number of people affected: millions. African-Americans on the path to rise up and surpass oppression were deflected, and those who dared to dream freely and exchange segregation for commercial success in their own communities were pulled back down to the status quo.
The fact that Hooker survived this devastation and grew up to become a valuable member of both the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement is a feat to be celebrated.
Born in Muskogee, Okla. in 1915, Hooker was one of five children born to parents who were both teachers. Her father moved the family to Tulsa, Okla. when she was 3 years old to pursue his goal of being an entrepreneur. He opened a department store that was very successful and had many loyal customers who understood that “if they were loyal to the businesses in the Tulsa area, the people there would thrive,” as Hooker explained.
And, as recorded, the area did thrive, even if the growth was short-lived.
“I haven’t forgotten any of it,” said Hooker, reflecting on the armed riot on her home when she was just 6 years old.
“It was such a shock to me because when I had been in school–a little private school–I thought everything in the Constitution about rights and liberties was for everybody, but I learned I was wrong.”
The police came into the town to try and “protect” the Blacks, but Hooker said she does not believe the sentiment was sincere. “You don’t protect someone by shooting them with bullets,” she said.
Hooker remembers the moment the white rioters came onto her property. The first thing they did was burn the brand-new doll’s clothes hanging out on the clothesline; the clothes her grandmother had made for her brown doll. They then came into her home to “maraud and steal and break things” before taking her father and only brother, who was 8 years old at the time, to a confinement facility where they were rounding up the town’s Black men.
“They disarmed all of the Black people and gave their weapons to any monster who didn’t have one. That was an evil kind of behavior,” said Hooker.
After the riots, Hooker’s mother moved the children to Topeka, Kan., where they stayed for less than a year. Since her father had stayed in Tulsa to try and rebuild his shop after the riots, Hooker’s mother eventually moved the children back there to mend the pieces of their broken life and start anew.
They remained there for two years, allowing Hooker to attend Booker T. Washington High School. She remembers her two years at the school as a great honor, because the faculty was determined to make sure “everybody could prosper and worked overtime” to achieve that goal.
When her father got a job in real estate, the family moved again to Columbus, Ohio. Hooker attended Ohio State University and received a bachelor’s degree in elementary education. Although she wanted to go on to study public health, she could not afford the tuition, which she had to work to pay for during the Great Depression.
“It was a hard time,” said Hooker. “So many places had closed down. We learned a lot about how to survive from being in the Depression, which is helping me now. But they’re not calling it a depression now, but a recession!”
Her ability to remain resilient during harsh economic times allowed her to lead a life full of purpose and joy. From being the first Black woman to join the Coast Guard in 1944–for which she was honored by the New York State Senate last year–to continuing her post-graduate studies in psychology at Columbia University, to working as the in-house psychologist for the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Hooker never failed to keep expanding her intellectual rein and remained curious about the ways in which she could truly help others.
Through much difficulty, mainly due to the color of her skin, Hooker finally received the opportunity to gain real-life clinical experience in New York to supplement her post-graduate pursuits. She fulfilled all of the requirements needed to be honored with a PhD and ended up teaching clinical psychology at the graduate school at Fordham for 23 years.
In the course of her life, Hooker has remained true to her belief that every single person has some good in them and people should strive to look for that good and pass it on.
“Even the people who had the most terrible reputations would save some of their bread for the squirrels that came up over [to them and] would try to save something for the birds who flew to their windowsill,” said Hooker about her time at the correctional facility.
For her deeply humanitarian beliefs, Hooker holds no bitterness for what happened to herself and her community all of those years ago.
“What you do is work to see that this doesn’t happen again to anyone else–try to figure out a way to keep it from reoccurring.”
And that is exactly what Hooker has devoted much of her life to: the education of youth to establish a generation more tolerant to racial diversity than its predecessors. It’s a task that would have been even a little bit easier had riots not destroyed the Black Wall Street.
“I really think the whole nation, now that we have so many minority people from different places, would [have] become more tolerant of people who don’t look like themselves,” said Hooker, who does not believe enough change has occurred since the 16-hour assault on her hometown.
Although we have achieved integration and more humanity even in communities with deep racial tensions, we still have a long way to go, she said.
“We have to start in the cradle with very small children, teaching them reverence for life [and] that everyone is the same under the skin. Every human counts and you shouldn’t do anything to people you don’t want them to do to you.”
However simple that statement is, however many times we heard it while growing up, the validity of the message still stands.
Dr. Olivia Hooker, psychologist, educator, woman and humanitarian, is all of those things and more. She has inspired many people to better themselves and many more to make something out of the nothing they were accustomed to.
Being recognized by the New York City Council and the State Senate is a great distinction for Hooker, but being remembered fondly by the many she helped is an honor to which very few can lay claim.