An Interview with Survivor Dr. Olivia J. Hooker
Dr. Hooker was the first African-American woman to enlist and go on active duty in the Coast Guard during World War II. She earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Rochester, and taught at Fordham University until retiring in 1985. At the time of the riots, she was six years old.
What was Greenwood like before the riot?
The Greenwood community stuck together. Everything worked very well. People cooperated, and we had everything we needed. We didn’t have to go out of the neighborhood to get anything. Except to the bank—and of course, being six years old, I wasn’t much in the banking world. But we did buy things like materials to sew—my grandmother sewed. Somebody would go downtown and buy yard goods. My father sold readymade clothes, but he didn’t sell yard goods.
How did your family fare during the riot?
Our mother always reminded us, the mob broke all her Caruso records. They didn’t break “The Old Rugged Cross,” and they didn’t break Paul Robeson—they didn’t know who Paul Robeson and Roland Hayes were, so they didn’t break those. So we did have some records left, although the phonograph was broken. They smashed that, and they chopped up my sister’s piano. But they didn’t know that the main thing in a piano is the sounding board, so they chopped the cabinet. And she was still able to play her beloved piano, which my father had ordered from Arkansas, because there were no piano stores in Muskogee, where we were born.
How about your father’s business?
Well, we lost everything. Everything was down to just bricks and rock, you know. And his store had been fully stocked, on credit, and so he spent years trying to pay off all those debts instead of declaring bankruptcy. He tried to pay them all, but he finally went bankrupt in 1927.
But he was walking in the rubble shortly after the riot, and he saw his safe was still sitting there. It was too big for them to take. So he opened the safe and everything was intact. He didn’t have money there, but he had bonds. And he had money from many people who used to bring a little bag and say, “Mr. Hooker, I was lucky,” and, you know, “Put my name on this and put this in your safe.” People would go over and say, “Keep this for me until I need it.” And Papa went around and gave them all [their money]. He found all of them, the ones that were in his safe, and he gave [the money] back.
He and Mama decided that we could cash the bonds and then [my father] and the YMCA secretary would go on a speaking tour of the black churches. Mainly they went to Washington and Richmond and places like that, and talked to the black ministers. And they were the ones who mobilized barrels of clothes and that sort of thing for the people who had nothing. Because they took everything that was good and burned everything that wasn’t. It was really devastating for all of the people.
Interview conducted by Susan Delson