2 Black History Icons You may Not Know Of
Dion Diamond, Civil Rights Activist
Taken in the summer of 1960, a young black man sits at a lunch counter in Arlington, Virginia. Two of his fellow protesters sit behind him, and a group of white men surrounds them.
This man is a civil rights activist you probably haven’t heard of. His name is Dion Diamond.
Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, Dion was a bit of a prankster, and spent much of his youth trying to, as he put it, “crash segregated society.”
In another 1960 photo, white protesters picket the integration of a Maryland amusement park. At the end of the line, you can see Dion smiling in defiance as he holds a sign of his own.
Olivia J. Hooker, Pioneer and First Black Woman in the Coast Guard
In November 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law a bill that established the United States Coast Guard Women’s Reserve. Known as SPARS, this new law allowed women to serve in the Coast Guard Reserve for the duration of World War II plus six months. Two years later, in October 1944, the ban on Black women becoming SPARS was lifted and in February 1945, Olivia Hooker joined four other women as the first class of Black SPARS.
Following her military service, Olivia earned her master’s degree in psychology and in 1961 she received her PhD. When President Barack Obama spoke at the United States Coast Guard Academy commencement ceremony in 2015, Dr. Hooker, 100 years old at the time, was sitting in the front row. As the cadets listened, President Obama called her “an inspiration” for the remarkable life she had led, and shared with the graduates her belief that, “It’s not about you, or me. It’s about what we can give to this world.”
