Hooper was the first white member of the African National Congress, and was described by its National Executive as "one of our number, and a leading worker in the struggle for freedom and democracy",[1] and was one of the ANC's three delegates to the first All-African Peoples' Conference in December 1958 in Accra, Ghana, and one of only two American observers at the Third All-African Peoples' Conference in Cairo, Egypt in March 1961.
[11] In 1907 the Fitkin family attended the John Wesley Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene located at the corner of Saratoga Avenue and Sumpter Street, Brooklyn,[12] then pastored by William Howard Hoople.
[11] In December, 1919, Mary-Louise 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.
On July 7, 1926, Mary-Louise 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.
[24][25] While in Scotland, Mary-Louise spoke at the inaugural District Nazarene Young People's Society Convention in the British Isles.
Chauncey David Norris (born July 23, 1884, in West Berkshire, Vermont; died January 16, 1961, in Dundee, Oregon),[30][31][32][33][34] a cousin of her mother, who was at that time pastor of the Church of the Nazarene at Berkeley, California.
[39] By April 1930 the Salsburys lived with Susan Norris Fitkin in her four-bedroom home (built in 1927) at 894 Longridge Road, Oakland, California.
[40][41] By 1931 E. Foster Salsbury was a vice-president and director of Pacific Freight Lines Corporation, Ltd., which was controlled by his father-in-law Abram Fitkin's American Utilities.
[52][53][54] In early October, 1935, Mary-Louise accompanied her mother on a mission trip to Latin America via the Panama Canal, and included visits to Guatemala, Haiti, Bahamas, and Colombia.
[55] Mary-Louise Salsbury wrote the story of this visit in a booklet, entitled Other Americas, published at her mother's expense with the proceeds going to the W.F.M.S.
[53][54] By August 1938 Mary-Louise had married Dr. Karl Josef Deissler (born June 29, 1906, in Heidelberg, Germany; died August 15, 1998, in Bern, Switzerland),[67][68][69] a German physician,[70] who graduated from the University of Heidelberg, who had fled Germany for the USA in September 1931[70] because of his liberal ideas and fears of Nazi persecution,[71] and had been a fellow of the Mayo Clinic from 1931 to 1935.
[82] When Dr. Deissler was excluded from the US western defense area on September 4, 1942, until November 17, 1943, as an enemy alien,[83] Mary-Louise and her daughter lived in Illinois.
On December 26, 1947, Mary-Louise married Clifford Ison "Cliff" Hooper, Sr., (1917–2001), an African American widower with two infant sons, whom she had met while campaigning for the NAACP, in Seattle, Washington.
Hooper, a former journalist and circulation manager with the Evansville Argus, the "city's only African American newspaper" that operated from June 1938 to October 1943; who had served in Civilian Conservation Corps in Indiana from 1935 to 1940, rising to the rank of Field Leader and First Sergeant; and had served in the US Army from June 1941, eventually being promoted to the rank of captain during World War II after postings in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Ireland, and California.
[95] Hooper returned to Stanford University in 1953 to complete her degree, majoring in German,[99] graduating with summa cum laude honors in June 1955.
"[102] Before 1955 Hooper was "involved in interracial work in California" with the Council for Civic Unity (CCU),[103][104][105] "the premier interracial organization working against discrimination in San Francisco, [whose] aim was to end discrimination in housing, employment, health, recreation, and welfare";[106] the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
[112][113][114][115] Returning to the USA by June 1956 to seek permanent residence in South Africa, in San Francisco Hooper met with her friend African-American civil rights activist Ethel Ray Nance, secretary of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP; and, a week later, met with American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor Dr. W. E. B.
[101] Travelling to London, England, through the influence of Du Bois,[116] Hooper met Trinidadian Pan-Africanist, journalist, and author George Padmore, who in turn wrote her a letter of introduction to former revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, then Prime Minister of Gold Coast, who later became the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, and would lead the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957.
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.
[107][165] In December 1965 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 (December 10), which attracted 3,500 attendees to hear the music of Pete Seeger and South African singer Miriam Makeba,[166][167] as well Martin Luther King Jr., whom Hooper had convinced to speak at the Benefit.
[171] 65 artists signed the Declaration, including Joan Baez, Tallulah Bankhead, Harry Belafonte, Saul Bellow, Leonard Bernstein, Victor Borge, Dave Brubeck, Carol Burnett, Diahann Carroll, Paddy Chayefsky, Ossie Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Ruby Dee, Henry Fonda, John Forsythe, James Garner, Van Heflin, Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, Eartha Kitt, Miriam Makeba, Johnny Mathis, Karl A. Menninger, Burgess Meredith, Arthur Miller, Henry Morgan, Julie Newmar, Edmond O'Brien, Frederick O'Neal, Odetta, Sidney Poitier, John Raitt, Jerome Robbins, Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Nina Simone, Ed Sullivan, Eli Wallach, and Poppy Cannon White.
[172] With Wendell Foster Hooper was an organizer and spokesman for the Committee of Conscience Against Apartheid,[173] which by December 1966, had sixty prominent members, including Stokely Carmichael, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Reinhold Niebuhr, Allen Ginsberg, Paddy Chayefsky, and Joan Baez.