For Olivia Hooker, And Those I Never Will Know

 Nearly a decade ago, I wrote something that, whatever its merits or lack thereof, is far more important than anything I’ve written on this blog.  I am mentioning it here,  not to promote it or myself, but to help keep the memory of its subject.

When I wrote that article, I, like many other people, was just learning about the incident I described. Though only a decade has passed, the day it was published seems like a lifetime, even an historical era, ago. During the previous few years, historians, public officials and the few remaining survivors of that tragedy were doing everything they could to ensure that it isn’t forgotten.  Now in the US, we have officials at every level, from the President to school board members, who are trying to keep it—and anything else that makes them uncomfortable—from being taught or even mentioned.

I am referring to the Tulsa Race Massacre, which took place 105 years ago today.  Like too many other tragedies, a false rumor sparked it. And, like too many of the most horrific episodes in history, it resulted in the destruction of, not only individual lives (the exact number will, most likely, never be known) but of a community: Mobs of white residents, deputized by the governor himself, wiped the Greenwood district off the face of the earth.

I have told my students they should take history personally. Possibly my worst failing or, at least, one of my biggest disappointments, was knowing that none of the students in a Women’s Studies class I taught seemed to understand as much.  In fact, some resisted the idea:  They were required to take the course as part of a program and, I now realize, were resistant simply out of resentment.  Then again, I remember when my mother, even when she did paid work, couldn’t open a checking account or get a credit card without my father’s signature. I also remember girls smarter and more talented and ambitious than I was being discouraged from, or outright denied the opportunity to, attend college because “It would be a waste of time, you’re going to get married anyway.” 

And when I wrote that article, a few survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre remained. I came into contact with one:  Olivia Hooker, who witnessed the pogrom as a little girl and was 101 years old when that article was published. She passed away two years later. I hope that, if I have done nothing else, I have honored her memory—and those of hundreds, possibly thousands, of others whose names neither I nor the rest of the world may ever know.