A Woman of Distinction – Maj. Oleta Crain, U.S. Army
Oleta Crain was born in Earlsboro, Oklahoma, on September 8, 1913. She grew up in Wewoka, where she graduated from Douglass High School and then went to Langston University for three years. She then transferred to Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in social science. She would then go on to earn another bachelor’s degree in business administration through the University of Maryland’s extension program in Heidelberg, Germany.
But she wasn’t done educating herself yet. She would continue her education throughout her career, at Harvard University, at Cambridge University in England, at the University of Vienna School of International Relations in Austria, and, finally, at Northeastern University.
This personal desire to learn, to educate herself, started early and covered lots of years, from before she entered the U.S. Army and while she was in the Army. In the early 1940s, she was teaching history and gym in a segregated school in Hugo, Oklahoma. Then she moved to Colorado in hopes of finding better-paying work. She found work at the Denver Ordnance Plant cleaning the restrooms. She was inspired to enter the military early in WWII by a Women’s Army Corps poster. She enlisted, and, after basic training, she applied to an officer training school, where she was one of three Black women out of 300 women in the class. This was 1943.
During her officer training time, Crain and the other two Black women were challenged by the existing realities of segregation and racial discrimination of that time in our history. She was not allowed to sleep in the barracks because of her race. Instead, ironically, she had her own room with much more privacy. She and the two other Black women in the class were not allowed to shower at the same time as the white candidates. They were not allowed to use the pool at the same time, and every time they were allowed to use the pool, it was drained and cleaned afterward.
Crain would eventually enter the Women’s Army Corps as a 2nd Lieutenant. After the war, she was the only Black female officer to be retained by the military. The Pentagon asked her to stay following the desegregation of the Army in 1947, “because she got along so well with the troops.”
She was promoted to captain in May of 1948 and was stationed at Westover Air Force Base, Massachusetts, to work in intelligence. She attended classes at Harvard, furthering her education while stationed there. But at Westover, she would encounter yet another experience of racism when a superior officer accused her of being a communist, which placed her under months of investigation. But, in her typical fashion, she came out of that experience with a top-secret security clearance.
In 1951 Crain was made the personnel director at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. She would then become the test control officer at the American base in Ruislip, England, from 1952-1955. This is when she would take courses at Cambridge University. From here, she would be stationed as the manpower officer at Lindsey Air Station in Germany.
Crain retired from active duty in 1963, after twenty years of service, with the rank of Major. She would join the U.S. Department of Labor in 1964 and remain there for the rest of her career. She lived a long life after retiring from the U.S. Dept. of Labor. She died on November 7, 2007, at the age of 94.
Major Oleta Crain began serving this nation at a time when segregation and discrimination were the common realities for African Americans. She faced those experiences of racism and discrimination with optimism and courage. She would eventually become recognized not just for her leadership and professional skills but for her pluck and optimistic tenacity. Her leadership and courage would be a positive force in helping the military to integrate the forces and to lift the respect for the role of women in the military.
The Veterans Site honors the work, the courage, and the dedication to service that was modeled by Maj. Oleta Crain. She never got angry, she just got to work, and with nothing less than optimism. She is a model of character and strength for all of us. Hooah!
