1st Black Woman to Join U.S. Coast Guard: Dr. Olivia Hooker

And we continue with our American Stories. And we now bring you the story of an extraordinary woman who was an inspiration not only for women of color, but an inspiration to all who knew her name: Doctor Olivia Hooker. Here’s Stacy Edwards with her story.

Ten years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, and eighteen years before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, Olivia Hooker became the first African American woman to join the U.S. Coast.

Guard. Nineteen forty-five. I joined March the ninth; was the day we went on duty. We had been campaigning for that privilege, but nobody joined. I kept watching the newspapers, that I thought to campaign for certain civil rights and then not use them, to me, is very futile, and somebody ought to join up at the campaign.

Born in Muscogee, Oklahoma, Olivia was just seven years old when her house was ransacked and burned by members of the KKK during the Tulsa Race Riots of nineteen twenty-one, while her and her three siblings hid under a table.

There were times when I didn’t know about prejudice because the only people that I had seen who were not African American were people who wanted to sell things to my father, and they brought presents for the children and listened to my sister play back, and all kinds of things to show our interest that they were. So I was totally surprised when the disaster happened. It wasn’t a riot. We were really the victims. But it took eighty years before we got an apology from the mayor of Tulsa, and they admitted that we were the victims. Of course, we got no monetary reimbursement, but at least they apologized. After eighty years.

After the riots, her family moved to Columbus, Ohio, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in nineteen thirty-seven from Ohio State University. While at OSU, she joined the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, where she advocated for African American women to be admitted to the U.S. Navy.

You see, there were no people of our race in the Navy—not no girls. We had been campaigning for that privilege, but nobody joined. I kept watching the newspapers, and I thought to campaign for certain civil rights and then not use them; to me, it’s very futile, and somebody wanted to join up at the campaign, so I thought, “Well, if I go and I survived, maybe someone else will come.” Although I had applied for the Navy, and they kept writing back saying, “There is a technicality,” they didn’t tell me what the technicality was. So I said, “Well, let me try the Coast Guard.” And the Coast Guard recruiter was just so welcoming. She wanted to be the first one to enroll African American.

Miss Hooker enlisted with the U.S. Coast Guard in February nineteen forty-five. On March ninth, she went to basic training in Brooklyn, New York.

When they told us to go to basic training, I took a trunk with all my luxuries at it. I didn’t know the seven girls, other girls that, when I went, all had duffel bags. Everything was new to me. They get you up at five o’clock in the morning, and you do exercises for an hour before you went to breakfast. And then, of course, you had to polish your floor, even though I didn’t need polishing, and they thought of chores for you. We went to Manhattan Beach Training Station, and we stayed there six and nine, fifteen weeks, I think. And then, when I graduated from Yeoman’s School, I was sent to Boston. The head of the Yeoman’s School, Lieutenantizley, had written to all of the Coast Guard stations. There were eleven districts, and the only one who answered yes—they would take an African American—was Admiral Derby in Boston.

While in Boston, Olivia earned the rank of Yeoman Second Class in the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve, where she served until her unit was disbanded in nineteen forty-six. By nineteen forty-seven, after receiving her Master’s, Hooker moved upstate to work in the mental health department of a women’s correctional facility. Many women in this facility were considered to have severe learning disabilities by staff. Hooker felt they were more capable than giving credit and re-evaluated them and helped the women to pursue better education and jobs, a passion she inherited from her mother.

My mother was a real suffragist. I mean, she was a campaigner for the women’s vote. And so I guess I inherited some of that. And I want to see equal pay for equal positions. And naturally, I’m trying to vote for people who believe that equal pay for equal positions should be the right of every person.

By nineteen sixty-one, Olivia Hooker became Doctor Olivia Hooker when she earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Rochester. In nineteen sixty-three, she joined Fordham University as a senior clinical lecturer. Eventually, she served as an associate professor until nineteen eighty-five. But it was her experience in the U.S. Coast Guard where Doctor Hooker realized her full potential.

I didn’t know many people that were not of my hue, and it was good for me to mix with other people and find out, you know, how they thought and what they were like. It taught me a lot about order and priorities. But I would like to see more of us realizing, you know, that our country needs us, and I’d like to see more girls consider spending some time in the military if they don’t have a job at all, and they have ambition and they don’t know what heights they might reach. It’s really nice to have a different points of view and different kinds of upbringing, and the world would really prosper from more of that.

After retiring at the age of eighty-seven, she joined the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary at the age of ninety-five. She received a presidential citation in twenty eleven and was inducted into the New York State Senate Veterans Hall of Fame on November twenty-first, twenty eighteen. She died of natural causes in her home in White Plains, New York, at the age of one hundred three. Although she was a practicing Methodist, Doctor Olivia Hooker found inspiration in the story of Saint Francis.

Saint Francis was a terrible boy. I mean, he did everything wrong to his family. And so if Saint Francis could become Saint Francis after all the things he did as a boy, I have faith that other people can change and concede the right path and not take the path of this straveled. My favorite hymn, one of them, is: “Have Thine Own Way, Lord, Have Thine Own Way, Thou Art The Potter, I Am Maclay, Mold Me And Make Me After Their Will While I Am Waiting, Peaceful And Still.” And I was just fond of that, thinking of the creator being the potter and I being the clay.

To me, that was

Important. Doctor Olivia Hooker’s story, here on Our American Stories.