HOOKER-OLIVIA

FIRST  AFRICAN-AMERICAN  WOMAN

TO  ENTER  U.S. COAST  GUARD

Olivia Juliette Hooker was an American psychologist and professor, the last known survivor of the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921, and the first African-American woman to enter the U.S. Coast Guard.  She was reportedly born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on February 12, 1915.  By 1921 her family was living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where her father was a successful clothing store owner.  On May 31, 1921, after a black man was wrongly accused of raping a white woman, the report led angry mobs of thousands of white men, led by the KKK, to descend into the African-American residential area of Tulsa, looting, setting fires and killing blacks who fought back but were greatly outnumbered.  The two-day incident, historically called the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921, resulted in deaths estimated to have numbered at least 300, with over 800 people admitted to local hospitals, an estimated 10,000 people were left homeless, and about 1,250 residences destroyed by fire.  When the Hooker residence was attacked, young Olivia reportedly hid with family members under a dining room table.  In later years, she was vocal concerning the incident not wanting the matter to be forgotten as she felt it was a tragic incident that should not be hidden and said, “It was not a riot, it was a massacre.”

After 1921, Olivia’s family moved to Columbus, Ohio, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1937 from Ohio State University.  During the early days of World War Two, Olivia advocated for African-American women to be admitted to the U.S. Navy but her request to join the Waves was denied several times for reasons never made clear to her.  Thus, in February 1945, she was accepted for enlistment into the SPARS, becoming the first African-American woman to join the Coast Guard.  On March 9, 1945, she commenced basic training at the Coast Guard Training Station, Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, New York.  She next attended Yeoman School following which she was assigned as a Yeoman to a Coast Guard facility at Boston where she performed yeoman duties processing men from active duty.  In June 1946, Hooker was herself discharged with the rate of Yeoman Second Class when the SPARs were disbanded.

After the war, Hooker earned a master’s degree at Columbia University and then a doctorate at the University of Rochester.  She went on to become a psychologist and a professor at Fordham University where she taught until 1985.  However, she was not finished with the Coast Guard because in 2010, at the age of 95, she commenced serving as a volunteer in the Coast Guard Auxiliary in Yonkers, New York.  In 2015, Hooker was honored when the Olivia Hooker Dining Facility at the Staten Island Coast Guard facility was named in her honor.  Additionally, a training facility at the Coast Guard's headquarters in Washington, D.C. was named after her that same year.  On November 21, 2018, she died of natural causes in her home in White Plains, New York, at the age of 103. 

A longtime friend has remarked, “She lived a phenomenal life.  Very few people come to the Earth and leave a mark like she did on this planet.  She lived a very remarkable life.”  Another friend said, “Her greatest impact was her never tiring in the need to seek justice.  It was just something about her spirit that would light up.”

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)