2017 NY EMMY NOMINATED – What Happened to Black Wall Street Featuring Dr. Olivia Hooker Watch and Listen to this historical account of the burning of Black Wall Street by 101 Year Old Dr. Olivia Hooker. The Interview was conducted by 2017 NY EMMY NOMINATED Xposure Greenburgh WXGB Fun Finance Radio interns Harshita Shet, Adrianna Murrell, Sydney Jackson and Jalisse Higinio. BIO Dr. Olivia J. Hooker was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma on February 12, 1915. Ku Klux Klan members ransacked her home during the Tulsa Massacre of Black Wall Street of 1921. Later Dr. Hooker was a founder of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission in hopes of demanding reparations for the riot’s survivors. In 2003, she was among survivors of the riot to file an unsuccessful federal lawsuit seeking reparations. After the riots, Dr. Hooker’s family moved to Columbus, Ohio where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in 1937 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 navy. She received her Masters ten years later in 1947 from the Teachers College of Columbia University. In 1961, she received her PhD in psychology from the University of Rochester. Dr. Hooker applied to the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) of the U.S. Navy, but was rejected due to her ethnicity. She disputed the rejection due to a technicality and Hooker was accepted. However, she had already decided to join the Coast Guard. She entered the U.S. Coast Guard in February 1945.
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