Ollie Tyler

Education and politics

Tyler is the seventh of nine children of Leroy and Ida Haley Spearman. She was born in Blanchard northwest of Shreveport 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, now Herndon Magnet School in Belcher, and earned a National Merit Scholarship to the Grambling State University in Grambling, west of Ruston, Louisiana, from which 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 African-American and woman principal.

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. No dates are given for any of her studies or institutions attended on her campaign website. In addition to Shreveport, she has resided in New York City and in Houston and Killeen, Texas, dates unknown but presumably prior to her time at Youree Drive Junior High School.

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. 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". 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 current superintendent John C. White.

In the runoff election for mayor of Shreveport on December 6, 2014, Tyler handily defeated an Independent candidate, lawyer Victoria Provenza (born 1960). Tyler received 34,208 votes (63.4 percent) to Provenza's 19,781 (36.6 percent). A third candidate, African-American 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).

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

Personal life

Tyler became the focus of controversy near the end of the mayoral campaign when she confirmed reports uncovered by the political consultant Elliott Stonecipher and others that she had shot to death with a pistol her first husband, Clyde Edward Harris, at her parents' 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, only because it wasn't her fault Tyler much later accused her father of domestic abuse and blamed him largely for an unhappy childhood.

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.

Tyler has one son, Bruce Anthony "Tony" Tyler, who was born in 1968, the same year as the shooting of his father, Clyde Harris. Tony Harris was adopted by James Tyler and reared as Tyler's own son. Ollie Tyler also has a stepdaughter, Wanda Veloria Tyler Kimble (born 1964), and husband Larry W. Kimble (born 1960), and two grandchildren.