41 Facts About Mary-Louise Hooper

Mary-Louise Hooper was a wealthy American heiress and activist in the Civil Rights Movement and anti-apartheid movement.

Mary-Louise Hooper served a brief imprisonment in Johannesburg, South Africa and subsequent exclusion from South Africa in 1957 and became a cause celebre both in South Africa and the United States.

Mary-Louise Hooper was active in the NAACP, the American Friends Service Committee, and was the West Coast representative of the American Committee on Africa from 1962 until about 1969.

Mary-Louise Hooper was the editor of the South African Bulletin from 1964 to 1968.

Mary-Louise Hooper Fitkin was born on March 2,1907, in Swampscott, Massachusetts, the only daughter and second oldest child of Susan Norris Fitkin, an ordained pastor in the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, and later the founding president of the Nazarene Women's Missionary Society, and Abram Edward Fitkin, a former evangelist and pastor who had become a businessman.

From infancy Mary-Louise Hooper attended the Church of the Nazarene with her family.

In December, 1919, Mary-Louise Hooper Fitkin organized the Do for Others Club, a boys' and girls' group for the Church of the Nazarene, whose purpose was to do whatever possible for the famine sufferers of India.

Mary-Louise Hooper Fitkin attended Adelphi Academy at Lafayette Avenue, St James Place and Clifton Place, Brooklyn, New York, and after graduation, she studied at Stanford University for one year until June 1928.

Mary-Louise Hooper Fitkin was married three times, and had one child, Suzanne Mary Salsbury.

On July 7,1926, Mary-Louise Hooper accompanied her mother, Susan Norris Fitkin, on her first overseas trip as General President of the Nazarene Women's Missionary Society, which was a two-month tour of the British Isles and various European countries, including France; Switzerland; Austria; Germany; and Italy.

In early December, 1928, Mary-Louise Hooper Salsbury accompanied her mother on her second missionary tour to Mexico.

In early October, 1935, Mary-Louise Hooper accompanied her mother on a mission trip to Latin America via the Panama Canal, and included visits to Guatemala, Haiti, Bahamas, and Colombia.

When her mother needed to visit the Territory of Hawaii in April 1940 due to her ill health, Mary-Louise Hooper was again her travel companion, travelling first class on the SS Matsonia from San Francisco to Honolulu on April 19,1940.

In November 1944 Dr Deissler resided at the home of his mother-in-law, 894 Longridge Road, Oakland, however Mary-Louise Hooper was not registered as living there at that time.

On December 26,1947, Mary-Louise married Clifford Ison "Cliff" Hooper, Sr.

Cliff Mary-Louise Hooper later became an artist, an activist, and a community leader, who co-founded the Negro Voters League, "a radical organization dedicated to the black power cause", and promoted the black power agenda by being a co-editor and writing a column for the Afro American Journal, a local publication that served the black community.

In September 1952 Mary-Louise Hooper returned to New York after sailing from Rotterdam on the SS Nieuw Amsterdam.

In May 1956 Mary-Louise Hooper was elected to membership of the Stanford chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Mary-Louise Hooper, who was a Life Member of the NAACP, who had been "long active in volunteer work to better inter-racial relations", was "an active supporter of African struggles against colonialism and apartheid".

Mary-Louise Hooper supported the African National Congress, and was described as "the only white person to ever work inside the African National Congress".

Mary-Louise Hooper met with Nkrumah at least 5 times in the Gold Coast in 1956.

Mary-Louise Hooper met with anti-apartheid activist Bishop Trevor Huddleston on that trip to London.

On her return to South Africa, Mary-Louise Hooper continued to campaign for the abolition of apartheid, and worked as a volunteer aide and secretary to ANC president Chief Albert Luthuli, and was seen as a "fairy godmother" to the ANC, providing financial support, transportation in her "Congress Special" sedan, and hosting secret ANC meetings in her home.

Mary-Louise Hooper was active in providing financial assistance and other support for those tried during the Treason Trial.

On March 10,1957, Mary-Louise Hooper was arrested and imprisoned for five days in what she described as "degrading and humiliating" conditions in the Fort Prison in Johannesburg.

Mary-Louise Hooper was freed by the Rand Supreme Court on a writ of habeas corpus, and later awarded damages, which she donated to the ANC.

Mary-Louise Hooper remained in correspondence with anti-apartheid activists, such as Nokukhanya Bhengu, wife of Albert Luthuli.

Mary-Louise Hooper served as one of the three official Africa National Congress delegates and the only American delegate to the first All-African Peoples' Conference in December 1958 in Accra, Ghana.

Mary-Louise Hooper was a delegate to the 2nd Congress in Tunis, Tunisia in January 1960, and was one of only two American observers at the Third All-African Peoples' Conference in Cairo in March 1961, having been denied delegate status despite being appointed as an ANC representative by Chief Luthuli.

Mary-Louise Hooper numbered among her personal friends President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana; Tom Mboya of Kenya, Chief Luthuli, Alan Paton and Oliver Tambo of South Africa; Bishop Trevor Huddleston of Tanganyika, Kenneth Kaunda of Northern Rhodesia, Ahmed Boumendjel of Algeria and Joshua Nkomo of Southern Rhodesia.

Additionally, Mary-Louise Hooper raised funds for the South African Defense Fund, which was to pay for the legal defence of those being prosecuted in the Treason Trial, and to support the families of political prisoners.

Mary-Louise Hooper spoke frequently on "Human Rights in South Africa" to churches, and civic organizations, including to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Democratic Club in Pasadena, California on April 20,1960, on the topic "Africa, a Continent in Turmoil".

On December 17,1962, Mary-Louise Hooper was the organizer of a picket by the NAACP, the Northern California Committee for Africa, and the Congress of Racial Equality of the Dutch freighter Raki, which had a load of asbestos, hemp, and coffee from South Africa, in San Francisco, to draw attention to racial discrimination in the Union of South Africa, and to encourage the USA to join a United Nations boycott of South African goods.

In late 1964 Mary-Louise Hooper moved to New York City to volunteer full-time as ACOA's Program Director for South Africa, and appeared before the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, where she submitted verified statements of physical and mental torture, signed by South Africans detained under South Africa's 90-day law, which allowed the South African government to arrest and hold anyone "for indefinite detention without trial".

Mary-Louise Hooper wrote prolifically on Africa and the issue of apartheid.

From its inception in October 1964 to 1968 Mary-Louise Hooper was the editor of the South African Bulletin published by ACOA.

In December 1965 Mary-Louise Hooper organized the Benefit for South African Victims of Apartheid Defense and Aid Fund at Hunter College in New York City on Human Rights Day, which attracted 3,500 attendees to hear the music of Pete Seeger and South African singer Miriam Makeba, as well Martin Luther King Jr.

In June 1966 Mary-Louise Hooper helped initiate and organize the Declaration of American Artists Against Apartheid, "We Say No to Apartheid", which sought to prevent cultural contacts with the apartheid regime.

In May 1967 Mary-Louise Hooper testified before a committee of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights,.

Mary-Louise Hooper supported the Front de Liberation Nationale, in its efforts to gain independence for Algeria from France, writing Refugee Algerian Students in 1960.

In 1981 Mary-Louise Hooper moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon, to be near her daughter and grandsons.