Ollie Tyler

Tyler is the seventh of nine children of Leroy and Ida Haley Spearman. She was born in Blanchard and reared on a dairy farm. She picked cotton as a girl and ironed and cleaned a residence to earn her lunch money. She graduated as valedictorian from Herndon High School in Belcher and earned a National Merit Scholarship to the Grambling State University, from where she received a Bachelor of Science degree. She taught at Youree Drive Middle School for twenty-three years until she was appointed as the school's first female African-American principal.[2]

She obtained a Master of Education degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She completed forty-two graduate hours through Southern University at Shreveport, Louisiana State University at Shreveport, and Northwestern State University in Natchitoches.[3] In addition to Shreveport, she has resided in New York City, in Houston and Killeen.[4]

In 1994 the Caddo Parish School Board named Tyler Director of Middle Schools and elevated her to deputy superintendent. In 2000, Tyler became deputy superintendent/chief academic officer for the New Orleans city public schools where she served for three years. In 2003, she returned to the Caddo Parish School Board in Shreveport as the parish superintendent.[2] In 2004 she was a member of the education transition team for incoming governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco. In 2007 she was named "Louisiana Superintendent of the Year".[3] In 2007 Tyler assumed the position as Deputy State Superintendent of Education under state superintendent Paul Pastorek. Tyler served as interim Louisiana state education superintendent; having served in that capacity from May 2011 to January 2012 between the appointments of Pastorek and John C. White.

In the runoff election for mayor of Shreveport that took place on December 6, 2014, Tyler handily defeated an Independent candidate, teacher Victoria Provenza. Tyler received 34,208 votes (63.4 percent) to Provenza's 19,781 (36.6 percent).[5] A third candidate, State Representative Patrick C. Williams, was eliminated in the primary election with 12,880 votes (21.7 percent). Tyler had led in the primary as well with 26,017 votes (43.7 percent) to Provenza's 15,155 (25.5 percent).[6]

Tyler is included among the "Ten Most Influential Women in Northwest Louisiana."[3]

In her bid for a second term as mayor, in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on November 6, 2018, Tyler faced Democrats Adrian Perkins and Steven Jackson and Republicans Lee O. Savage Jr. and Jim Taliaferro.[7] Tyler trailed in the primary with 24 percent of the vote and faced fellow Democrat Adrian Perkins in the runoff primary. Because Savage and Taliaferro divided the Republican vote, 34 percent of the primary total, the GOP was shut out of the mayoral runoff.[8]

In the runoff election, Tyler lost to Perkins, who polled 25,138 votes (64.4 percent) to Tyler's 13,895 (35.6 percent).[9]

Tyler became the focus of controversy near the end of her first mayoral campaign when she confirmed reports uncovered by the political consultant Elliott Stonecipher and others that she had shot her first husband, Clyde Edward Harris, to death with a pistol at her parent's residence at 1807 Ebony Street in Shreveport on August 5, 1968. Tyler claimed that Harris had repeatedly beaten her. She was twenty-three at the time; he was twenty-four, and they had an infant son. Tyler told police at the time that she suspected Harris had been unfaithful to her and that the two had been estranged for much of their brief marriage. They lived at 1433 Harvard Street. The death was ruled an "accidental and justifiable homicide," and the Caddo Parish district attorney never charged Ollie Tyler with a crime.[10][11] Tyler much later accused her father of domestic abuse and blamed him largely for an unhappy childhood.[2]

Tyler is the widow of the Reverend James C. Tyler (1941-1990), whom she wed in 1972. He was employed by Melton Truck Lines and was an associate of the minister and civil rights figure Herman Farr, one of the first African Americans elected to the Shreveport City Council in 1978, when the chamber was converted to the single-member district concept. A native of DeSoto Parish, James Tyler is interred at the Upper Zion Baptist Church Cemetery in Blanchard.[12]

Tyler has one son, Bruce Anthony "Tony" Tyler, who was born in 1968, the same year as the shooting of his father, Clyde Harris.[13] Tony Harris was adopted by James Tyler and reared as Tyler's own son.[11] Ollie Tyler also has a stepdaughter and two grandchildren.[3]