This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

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. Dr. Olivia Hooker. Here's Stacey Edwards with her story.

Ten years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus,

and 18 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.

1945, I joined, March the 9th, was the day we went on duty.

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 fuel, and somebody ought to join up after the campaign.

Born in Muskegee, 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 1921, 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 Bach and all kinds of things to show how interested they were.

So I was totally surprised when the disaster happened.

It wasn't a riot. We were really the victims.

But it took 80 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 80 years.

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