Death of Olivia Hooker in 2018-- Part 4: Joined the Coast Guard in WW II As a SPAR

Later, during World War II, she was a member of Delta Sigma Theta and took part in her sorority's efforts to integrate the U.S. Navy, which had started accepting women.  She said, "They wrote back and said there was complication.  They wouldn't tell me what the complication was."

Instead, she enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in early 1945, three years after Congress passed a law approving the creation of the Coast Guard Women's Reserve to help fill jobs vacated by men who went abroad to fight in the war.

Hooker became one of the first women to join the Women's Reserve, known as the SPARS.