The Life of Olivia Hooker Would Sure Make a Wonderful Movie

After writing these posts on Olivia Hooker's life, I am of the opinion that a feature movie on her life is in order.

I just watched the movie "Hidden Figures" which, other than the Race Riot, draws many parallels.

So, come on Hollywood.  This would make one wonderful movie.

Talk about a woman who overcame and overcame.

That was Olivia Hooker.

Death of Olivia Hooker-- Part 7: The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and An Honor

Tulsa was racially segregated and reeling from a recent lynching when Dick Rowland, a black 19-year-old shoe-shiner, walked to the Drexel Building, which had the only toilet downtown available to black people.

Rowland stepped into an elevator.  Sarah Page, a white elevator operator, began to shriek.

"While it is still uncertain as to precisely what happened in the Drexel Building on May 30, 1921, the most common explanation is that Rowland stepped on Page's foot as he entered the elevator, causing her to scream," the Oklahoma Historical Society reported.

This was what caused the Tulsa Race Riot.

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As Hooker sat in the front row at a Coast Guard ceremony in 2015, she watched as President Barack Obama honored her, recounting her life story.  He described her as a "tireless voice for justice and equality."

I agree, she is one amazing woman.

Death of Tulsa Race Massacre Survivor Olivia Hooker-- Part 6: Education and the Commission

Olivia Juliet Hooker was born in Muscogee, Oklahoma, on February 12, 1915, and was one of five children.  She graduated from Ohio State University in 1937, then taught elementary school in Columbus, Ohio.

In 1947, she received a master's degree in psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University.  In 1961, she earned a doctorate from the University of Rochester.

In 1997, she worked on the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, which investigated the massacre and issued a report in 2001 "detailing for the first time  the extent of the city and state government's involvement in the riot and the cover up that followed and the total lack of remedy available in the courts at the time," according to a congressional report.

Death of Olivia Hooker in 2018-- Part 5: One of First Women in Coast Guard and a PH.D.

She was stationed in Boston and performed administrative duties before the SPARs program was disbanded in 1946.  She was discharged as a petty officer 2nd class, according to a Coast Guard report, then went on to complete her doctorate.

She became a senior clinical lecturer at Fordham in 1963 and retired from the university in 1985.

Thirty years later, the Coast Guard named a building on Staten Island after her, breaking a tradition of ship- and building-christening in honor only of those who have died.  The service said it was making an exception because of her "distinguished service to the Coast Guard and her wonderful efforts in serving and helping others."

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.

Death of One of the Last Survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 2018: Olivia Hooker (1915-2018)

From the November 29, 2018, Chicago Tribune  by DeNeen L. Brown of the Washington Post.

Olivia Hooker called it "The Catastrophe," the notorious 48 hours of fire and death that leveled "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa, Oklahoma when she was six-years-old.

The Tulsa Race Massacre erupted on May 31, 1921, when a white lynch mob descended on the courthouse where a young black teenager was being held.

A group of black World War I veterans tried to protect the teen and in the ensuing violence, as many as 300 black people died and thousands more saw their homes and livelihoods destroyed by torch.

Some people were burned alive, and 40 square blocks of businesses and residential property -- valued then at more than $1 million -- were destroyed.

Dr. Hooker later was among the first black women to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard and retired as an associate professor of psychology at Fordham University in New York.  But by the time of her death on Nov,. 21, at the age of 103, she had also become one of the last known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

An Amazing Woman.