later in 1947 from the Teachers College of Columbia University. In 1961, she received her PhD in psychology from the University of Rochester.
She 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. On March 9, 1945, Hooker went to basic training for six weeks in Manhattan Beach, NY where Coast Guard Women’s Reserve (SPARS) had to attend class and pass exams. She became the first African-American woman to enter the U.S. Coast Guard. After basic training, Hooker specialized in the yeoman rate and remained at boot camp for an additional nine weeks before heading to Boston.
After receiving her Masters, Hooker moved upstate to work in the mental hygiene department of a women’s correctional facility in Albion. Many women in this facility were considered to have severe learning disabilities by staff. Hooker believed they were more capable than given credit and re-evaluated them and helped the women to pursue better education and jobs. She credited this success with “approaching them with an open mind.”
In 1963, she joined Fordham University as a senior clinical lecturer; eventually she became an associate professor until 1985.
She was one of the founders of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Division 33, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. She served as an early director of the Kennedy Child Study Center in New York City.
It would be 80 years before the State of Oklahoma cited the Klu Klux Klan for the disaster.