TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Mabel B. Little, who had survived the 1921 Tulsa race riot to become a matriarch of the Tulsa's black community, died Jan. 13. She was 104.
Little, the granddaughter of former slaves, came to Tulsa in 1913 from Boley, then one of several dozen black towns in Oklahoma. With her mother ill, she began working at the Brady Hotel for $20 a month. The following year, she met and married Presley Little.
Little opened her first beauty shop in 1917 and continued in the business for more than 50 years.
Between 1918 and 1927, Little and her husband adopted 11 children, most of whom were the natural children of family members. But her husband died one month after the last children came to live with the family, leaving her to raise the children alone. She even adopted a 12th child in the mid-1940s. Little also helped other needy children in Tulsa.
During the Great Depression, she took a job at McDonnell Douglas and followed the aviation industry from Tulsa to Wichita, Kan., to Los Angeles.
In her life story, "Fire on Mt. Zion: My Life and History as a Black Woman in America," Little tells of growing up in a segregated society and recounts the riot's destruction.