On May 31, 1921, six-year-old Olivia Hooker was home with her family in Tulsa, Okla., when a group of white men came through the backyard carrying torches. Her mother quickly hid Olivia and her three siblings under the dining room table, covering them with a tablecloth and told them not to make a sound.
"It was a horrifying thing for a little girl who's only six years old," she told Radio Diaries, "trying to remember to keep quiet, so they wouldn't know we were there."
The men entered the house and began to destroy anything they could find of value. They broke her father's record player and took an ax to her sister Irene's beloved piano before moving on to other homes and businesses in the community.
Before the events in May of 1921, the Greenwood district of Tulsa was a predominately African-American neighborhood, known for its thriving middle-class. The main strip, Greenwood Avenue, was lined with successful black-owned businesses, including the Hooker family's store, which sold quality brand-named clothes.
"It was a neighborhood where you could be treated with respect," Hooker says.
Greenwood may have been a haven for African-Americans, but the state of Oklahoma had strict laws limiting the rights of black people. Schools, hospitals, trains, stores, restaurants, even public phone booths were segregated and miscegenation was a felony. Lynchings were not uncommon and by 1920, the Ku Klux Klan was reemerging in the state.
The riot begins
When Dick Rowland, a young black man, was accused of assaulting a young white woman in an elevator in May 1921, things escalated quickly. He was arrested and word spread that white mobs were headed to the courthouse, intending to lynch him.
The mobs were met by a group of armed black men, many of whom were World War I veterans. After a confrontation, shots were fired, and thus began a day-long assault on Greenwood. In less than 24 hours, the white mobs destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses. They set fire to schools, churches, libraries, and movie theaters, leveling entire city blocks.
"My father's store was destroyed," Hooker says. "There was nothing left but one big safe. It was so big they couldn't carry it away, so they had to leave it — in the middle of the rubble."
Reports varied wildly. Initial estimates put the death toll somewhere between 36 and 85. One report, released by Maurice Willows who directed the American Red Cross relief efforts, estimated that as many as 300 people were killed. Today, the Tulsa Race Riot is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.