Olivia Hooker, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma race riots, and a pioneer in the history of women and minorities, has died at age 103.
Hooker was 6 years old when a mob of white Americans destroyed over 35 blocks of residential homes and businesses in the wealthiest Black community at the time, known as “Black Wall Street.”
Considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the U.S., the attack was carried out on the ground and by air. Thousands of Black residents were arrested and detained and tens of thousands were left homeless.
Hooker survived the massacre and went on to become the first Black woman in the Coast Guard and a renowned psychology professor at Fordham University in New York. She died Wednesday at her home in White Plains, New York, said her goddaughter, Janis Porter.
Hooker reportedly had no surviving relatives.
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“Her mind was clear, no dementia. She was just tired,” Porter said Friday. She didn’t provide a cause of death.
Dr. Olivia Hooker recounted the historic race riot at a briefing before members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other leaders on Capitol Hill in Washington back in 2005.
She also told National Public Radio in an interview this year that she hid under a table as a torch-carrying mob destroyed her family’s home.
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“The most shocking was seeing people you’d never done anything to irritate would just, took it upon themselves to destroy your property because they didn’t want you to have those things,” Hooker said. Her family moved after the riots.
The violence began after a Black man allegedly assaulted a white woman in an elevator in Tulsa. The number of deaths was never confirmed but varies from 36 to 300 or more.
During World War II, Hooker became the first African-American woman to join the U.S. Coast Guard as a member of the Semper Paratus program, New York Times reports. She went on to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Rochester.
As noted by the Chicago Sun-Times, Dr. Hooker was also a member of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, now called the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission, which has sought reparations for those impacted by the violent riots their survivors.