Last Witness: Surviving the Tulsa Race Riot
Radio Diaries
Radio Diaries & Radiotopia
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 31 May 2018
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On May 31, 1921, six-year-old Olivia Hooker was home with her family when a group of white men launched an attack on the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In less than 24 hours, the mobs destroyed more than 1000 homes and businesses. It’s estimated as many as 300 people were killed. The Tulsa Race Riot is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. Olivia Hooker, now 103, is the last surviving witness to the events of that day.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Radiotopia |
| 0:02.0 | From PRX |
| 0:05.0 | From PRX's Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm Joe Richmond. |
| 0:10.0 | I have a folder by my desk. |
| 0:13.0 | It's called Too Late Stories. |
| 0:15.0 | It's filled with names and news clippings about people. |
| 0:18.0 | I would have loved to interview for a story, but I was too late. |
| 0:23.3 | There's this one. Mark Matthews, the last of the legendary Buffalo soldiers. |
| 0:28.6 | They were African-American soldiers who fought in the Indian Wars of the late 1800s. |
| 0:32.9 | He died in 2005 at the age of 111. |
| 0:37.2 | There's this guy, Joe Malta. |
| 0:39.6 | He was the U.S. military's hangman at the Nuremberg trials, responsible for executing Hitler's |
| 0:44.7 | cabinet. |
| 0:46.2 | And then there's Suzanne Blackmar. |
| 0:48.2 | She's the little old lady who famously refused to abandon her rent-controlled Manhattan |
| 0:52.5 | apartment in the 1980s when a real estate |
| 0:55.0 | tycoon named Donald Trump tried to evict her so he could raise the rent. |
| 1:00.2 | She won the case. |
| 1:03.0 | All of these would have made great radio stories. |
| 1:05.2 | Instead, they made great obituaries. |
| 1:07.7 | At Radio Diaries, we try to tell the stories of people who are still around before it's too late. |
... |
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