Olivia Hooker: A survivor of the Tulsa riots dies at 103

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When Olivia Hooker was six, she was forced to hide under a table when a white crowd destroyed the neighborhood around her.

Later, she would tell how much she struggled to keep quiet while the men carrying the torch carried an ax to the family piano. Outside, nearly 1,000 homes and businesses – including his father's clothing store – were shrinking.

The 1921 racial riot in Tulsa, as it would be called, would also cause 300 deaths among blacks.

But the horrific incident in Oklahoma would be far from the only highlight of Ms. Hooker's remarkable life.

In 103 years, she became the first African-American woman to join the US Coast Guard, earn a doctorate and play a key role in the justice of racial riots more than 70 years later. the fact.

It would be praised by the first black president of the United States as "tireless voice for justice and equality", and described as "national treasure" by the chief of the US Coast Guard.

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Mrs. Hooker, who died Wednesday at her home in White Plains, New York, thousands of miles away and nearly 100 years old from the Tulsa riots, was born in February 1915 in Muskogee, in the United States. ;Oklahoma.

When she was six, the family had moved to Tulsa, where her father had "a very good shop" that "did not wear anything of poor quality".

They lived in Greenwood, a wealthy African-American region known as "Black Wall Street".

But on May 31, 1921, it would become the scene of the worst racial riot in the United States – prompted by rumors that a black man assaulted a white woman in an elevator.

Ms. Hooker was informed early on when she saw men carrying lighted torches enter their backyard. It was then, she told American radio NPR, that her mother hid Ms. Hooker and her three siblings under a table.

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The crowd destroyed the piano and clothes of her dolls, but that's not what Ms. Hooker was most affected by when she later called "the terrible Tulsa disaster".

"For me, the most shocking thing was seeing people to whom you had never done anything to irritate, who simply took it upon themselves to destroy your property because they did not want you to have these things, and they taught you a lesson, "she told NPR.

His family did not stay in Tulsa after the riots. Instead, they moved to a place where children could grow up safely. Ms. Hooker finally graduated from Ohio State University.

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And then, with World War II raging around them, President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the female military to minorities.

Mrs. Hooker knew exactly what she had to do: initially rejected by the Navy Women's Reserve, she had joined the Coast Guard Women's Reserve, known as Spars, in 1945.

She was the first black woman to do it.

"Miss Hooker has not had the easy task of getting involved," wrote Lt recruiter Margaret Tighe about her enlistment.

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"She is the first black woman to be accepted by the Spars and she is fully aware of this fact, she feels a sincere desire to serve and has the feeling of opening a field to the young women of her race."

However, it seems that Ms. Hooker had other concerns in mind.

"I did not tell my mother because I thought she would fly," she told Google earlier this year.

"When the day came, I told Mom, let's take a cup of tea." To my astonishment, she told me that if I were a young woman, I'd be there since long time."

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His role was mainly to "prepare the return of the many coast guards returning from the war and to rejoin civilian life," said the Coast Guard.

The following year, the Spars were dissolved. But his time in the Coast Guard began to open other doors. Through her benefits to the IG, she was able to obtain a master's degree from Columbia University, followed by a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Rochester.

Later, in the 1960s, she began working as a teacher at Fordham University in New York.

Then, in 1997, she was a founding member of Tulsa's Race Anti-Riot Commission. Four years later, the commission's findings would pave the way for recognition of the true magnitude of what happened in Greenwood.

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It is hardly surprising that former President Barack Obama describes it as a "source of inspiration" in 2015.

"She has been a teacher and mentor to her students, a passionate advocate for Americans with disabilities, a young children's counseling psychologist, a caregiver at the height of the AIDS epidemic, a tireless voice for justice, and the world's best. "Equality," Obama told the Coast Guard Class of 2015 while she was sitting in the front row.

Indeed, it was a woman who began volunteering with the 95-year-old Auxiliary Coast Guard, who still spoke to reporters about her remarkable life – and lessons learned – during her 103 years of service. years.

As for her motivation, Ms. Hooker had a simple answer: "It's not about you or me, it's about what we can give to this world."