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- African American and African Diasporic Studies
- African Americans and Oklahoma History
African American and African Diasporic Studies: African Americans and Oklahoma History
- African American Oral History Resources from OSU"The Oklahoma Oral History Research Program works to document and make accessible the history of Oklahoma and OSU through oral history interviews. By recording first-person perspectives of lived events, oral history is a research methodology utilized to document a complex and inclusive archive of experiences through an intentional recorded interview process which is made available for future generations. The resources listed in this guide highlight the various projects and interviews in our archive that focus on African American history in Oklahoma, with topics ranging from school desegregation to the history of all-Black towns in Oklahoma"
- Black American Military Experience Collection(Contact University Archives for questions - libscua@okstate.edu) "Collection traces the Black military experience from colonial times through the Gulf War. These experiences are documented in personal narratives, biographies, and regional, world and regimental histories. The collection covers a wide range of topics relating to race relations and the social and economic world of Black people through history. The theme of race relations is an important focus of the collection. The collection documents the change in the perception of Black people and their culture over time, especially in the last century. Race riots are one subject covered extensively, especially the Tulsa, Oklahoma Race Massacre of 1921. The collection is primarily books, but also contains some manuscripts, interviews, clippings, maps and reports."
- Gateway to Oklahoma History"The Gateway is an online repository of Oklahoma history, brought to you by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visitors can search and view historic thousands of newspapers, photographs, maps and documents."
- Hannah Diggs Atkins Papers(Contact University Archives for questions - libscua@okstate.edu) "Hannah D. Atkins, the first African-American woman to be elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives, served from 1968 until 1980 as the representative from the 97th District. She authored bills to improve the mental health system, require immunizations for school age children, support elections of school boards by wards, and establish open meetings laws. President Jimmy Carter named Atkins to the General Assembly of the 35th Session of the United Nations in 1980. She was a member of several committees and served as Chairwoman of the Third Committee, which concentrated on social and economic issues. In January 1983 Henry Bellmon selected Atkins as Assistant Director of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. Then in January 1987, following his election as Governor, Bellmon asked Atkins to serve as the Cabinet Secretary for Social Services, which was changed to Cabinet Secretary of Human Resources in September 1987. That latter month also was when she added Secretary of State to her duties, where she served until January 1991. Atkins has taught at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Central Oklahoma, the Oklahoma City University Law School, and Oklahoma State University. She also has served as a director on numerous boards and as an officer in a wide variety of organizations, several of which have been concerned with civil rights and liberties. Among the many honors she has received is the National Governors’ Association Award for Distinguished Service to State Government."
- Solomon Sir Jones Films, 1924-1928(From Yale University's Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library) "The Solomon Sir Jones films consist of 29 silent black and white films documenting African-American communities in Oklahoma from 1924 to 1928. The films measure 12,800 feet (355 min). All films are B-wind positive prints, except one roll that contains approximately 150 feet of orange base B-wind positive. Jones filmed Oklahoma residents in their homes; during their social, school and church activities; in the businesses they owned; and performing various jobs. The films document several Oklahoma communities, including Muskogee, Okmulgee, Tulsa, Wewoka, Bristow and Taft. The films also document Jones’s trips to Indiana, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, New York City, South Carolina, Colorado, and overseas to France, England, Palestine, Switzerland, Italy, Northern Africa, and Germany. Slates between scenes identify locations, dates, and subjects. Jones frequently filmed at various locations by positioning himself outside a building while people exited the building in a line. This perspective provides footage of people as they walk by the camera, usually looking directly at it. Footage of churches includes congregants exiting the service and socializing outside; footage of schools often includes students playing outside or doing exercises; and footage of people at their home includes them outside on their porches or in their yards. Aside from church and scheduled school activities, people presumably exited at Jones’s request for the purpose of being filmed by him"
- Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921"Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 Collection documents the history of the event through photographs that are all part of a rich archive of materials from the Ruth Sigler Avery Collection housed at the Oklahoma State University-Tulsa Library."
- Black History is Oklahoma HistoryA general resource created by the Oklahoma Historical Society to share resources about the Black experience in Oklahoma.
- The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"Contains more than 2,450 entries, including biographies, geographical features, town and county histories, major events and historical movements and much more about the state of Oklahoma and its people."
- Focus: Black Oklahoma"Focus: Black Oklahoma is a news and public affairs program covering topics relevant to the Black community statewide. The show seeks to inform the public through stories and interviews, engage the community through lively discussion and spotlight local artists and creators."
- How a Court Answered a Forgotten Question of Slavery’s LegacyThis article from Time takes a closer look at the case of the Cherokee Freedmen and the story of Native Americans as enslaved people and slave owners.
- Oklahoma Primary SourcesThis guide is largely a compilation of primary source digital collections related to a variety of Oklahoma topics, including openly available resources as well as proprietary databases subscribed to by the OSU Libraries
- Tri City Collective"Founded in 2016 by seasoned educators with a commitment to diversity, inclusion, and providing learning and artistic opportunities outside the classroom for youth and adults. The Collective’s work is driven by a passion for social justice and creative expression, with the understanding that every human has thoughts worth listening to and should have access to platforms to be heard."
- Women of Black Wall Street"Women of Black Wall Street (WBWS) captures the experiences of Black Greenwood women to add to the larger story of this dynamic community. By focusing on women, it also challenges the intersectional invisibility that this population faced because of their race and gender."
"Women of Black Wall Street was produced at Oklahoma State University in HIST 4073: Digital Methods in History, Fall 2020. The course was taught by Dr. Brandy Thomas Wells, Assistant Professor of History."
Oklahoma and the West
Freedom's Racial Frontier by
Between 1940 and 2010, the black population of the American West grew from 710,400 to 7 million. With that explosive growth has come a burgeoning interest in the history of the African American West--an interest reflected in the remarkable range and depth of the works collected in Freedom's Racial Frontier. Editors Herbert G. Ruffin II and Dwayne A. Mack have gathered established and emerging scholars in the field to create an anthology that links past, current, and future generations of African American West scholarship. The volume's sixteen chapters address the African American experience within the framework of the West as a multicultural frontier. The result is a fresh perspective on western-U.S. history, centered on the significance of African American life, culture, and social justice in almost every trans-Mississippi state. Examining and interpreting the twentieth century while mindful of events and developments since 2000, the contributors focus on community formation, cultural diversity, civil rights and black empowerment, and artistic creativity and identity. Reflecting the dynamic evolution of new approaches and new sites of knowledge in the field of western history, the authors consider its interconnections with fields such as cultural studies, literature, and sociology. Some essays deal with familiar places, while others look at understudied sites such as Albuquerque, Oahu, and Las Vegas, Nevada. By examining black suburbanization, the Information Age, and gentrification in the urban West, several authors conceive of a Third Great Migration of African Americans to and within the West. The West revealed in Freedom's Racial Frontier is a place where black Americans have fought--and continue to fight--to make their idea of freedom live up to their expectations of equality; a place where freedom is still a frontier for most persons of African heritage.
Call Number: 305.800978 F853ISBN: 9780806159768Publication Date: 2018-03-15
Growing up with the Country by
The masterful and poignant story of three African-American families who journeyed west after emancipation, by an award-winning scholar and descendant of the migrants Following the lead of her own ancestors, Kendra Field's epic family history chronicles the westward migration of freedom's first generation in the fifty years after emancipation. Drawing on decades of archival research and family lore within and beyond the United States, Field traces their journey out of the South to Indian Territory, where they participated in the development of black and black Indian towns and settlements. When statehood, oil speculation, and Jim Crow segregation imperiled their lives and livelihoods, these formerly enslaved men and women again chose emigration. Some migrants launched a powerful back-to-Africa movement, while others moved on to Canada and Mexico. Their lives and choices deepen and widen the roots of the Great Migration. Interweaving black, white, and Indian histories, Field's beautifully wrought narrative explores how ideas about race and color powerfully shaped the pursuit of freedom.
Call Number: Map Room, Lower Level 976.60049607 F454gISBN: 9780300180527Publication Date: 2018-01-09
In Search of the Racial Frontier by
The American West is mistakenly known as a region with few African Americans and virtually no black history. This book challenges that view in a complex chronicle that begins in 1528 with the Spanish-speaking blacks. In 1848 the first English speaking blacks arrived - as slaves - creating a nucleus of post-American Civil War communities. Thousands of African-Americans thereafter migrated to the high plains while others drove cattle up the Chisholm trail or served on remote army outposts. The book moves on to examine the first black church in 1872, the West's black civil rights movement which began during the Civil War and 20th-century changes such as migration after World War II, the civil rights movement during the 1960s and the interest in multiculturalism.
Call Number: 978.0049607 T245iISBN: 9780393041057Publication Date: 1998-02-01- Journey Toward Hope: A History of Blacks in Oklahoma by This illustrated history of Black people in Oklahoma covers almost every major aspect of Black life, with an emphasis on social and cultural developments within the Black community.Call Number: 976.600496 F832jISBN: 9780806118109Publication Date: 1982-11-01
Civil Rights
Black Americans and the Civil Rights Movement in the West by
In 1927, Beatrice Cannady succeeded in removing racist language from the Oregon Constitution. During World War II, Rowena Moore fought for the right of black women to work in Omaha's meat packinghouses. In 1942, Thelma Paige used the courts to equalize the salaries of black and white schoolteachers across Texas. In 1950 Lucinda Todd of Topeka laid the groundwork for the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. These actions--including sit-ins long before the Greensboro sit-ins of 1960--occurred well beyond the borders of the American South and East, regions most known as the home of the civil rights movement. By considering social justice efforts in western cities and states, Black Americans and the Civil Rights Movement in the West convincingly integrates the West into the historical narrative of black Americans' struggle for civil rights. From Iowa and Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest, and from Texas to the Dakotas, black westerners initiated a wide array of civil rights activities in the early to late twentieth century. Connected to national struggles as much as they were tailored to local situations, these efforts predated or prefigured events in the East and South. In this collection, editors Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D. Wintz bring these moments into sharp focus, as the contributors note the ways in which the racial and ethnic diversity of the West shaped a specific kind of African American activism. Concentrating on the far West, the mountain states, the desert Southwest, the upper Midwest, and states both southern and western, the contributors examine black westerners' responses to racism in its various manifestations, whether as school segregation in Dallas, job discrimination in Seattle, or housing bias in San Francisco. Together their essays establish in unprecedented detail how efforts to challenge discrimination impacted and changed the West and ultimately the United States.
Call Number: 323.1196073 B6265ISBN: 9780806161969Publication Date: 2019-02-14
Struggles Before Brown by
There were many little-known challenges to racial segregation before the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The author's oral history interviews highlight civil rights protests seldom considered significant, but that help us understand the beginnings of the civil rights struggle before it became a mass movement. She brings to light many important but largely forgotten events, such as the often overlooked 1950s Oklahoma sit-in protests that provided a model for the better-known Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-ins. This book's significance lies in its challenge to perspectives that dominate scholarship on the civil rights movement. The broader concepts illustrated-including agency, culture, social structure, and situations-throughout this book open up substantially more of the complexity of the civil rights struggle. This book employs a methodology for analyzing not just the civil rights movement but other social movements and, indeed, social change in general.
Call Number: 323.1196073 V226sISBN: 9781594514586Publication Date: 2007-11-30
Greenwood and Black Wall Street
Black Wall Street by
From riot to renaissance in Tulsa's historic Greenwood district
Call Number: 976.686 J67bISBN: 9780585233758Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Black Wall Street 100 by
Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples with its Historical Racial Trauma, endorsed by the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission and the 400 Years of African American History Commission, furthers the educational mission of both bodies. The book offers updates on developments in Tulsa generally and in Tulsa's Greenwood District specifically since the publication of Hannibal B. Johnson's, Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District. Black Wall Street 100 is a window into what distinguishes the Tulsa of today from the Tulsa of a century ago. Before peering through that porthole, we must first reflect on Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District in all its splendor and squalor, from the prodigious entrepreneurial spirit that pervaded it to the carnage that characterized the 1921 massacre to the post-massacre rebound and rebuilding that raised the District to new heights to the mid-twentieth-century decline that proved to be a second near-fatal blow to the current recalibration and rebranding of a resurgent, but differently configured, community. Tulsa's trajectory may be instructive for other communities similarly seeking to address their own histories of racial trauma. Conversely, Tulsa may benefit from learning more about the paths taken by other communities. Through sharing and synergy, we stand a better chance of doing the work necessary to spur healing and move farther toward the reconciliation of which we so often speak.
Call Number: 976.686ISBN: 9781681791791Publication Date: 2020-07-20- They Came Searching: How Blacks sought the promised land in Tulsa byCall Number: 976.6860049 G259tISBN: 9781571681454Publication Date: 1997-04-01
Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District by
In the early 1900s, an indomitable entrepreneurial spirit brought national renown to Tulsa's historic African American community, the Greenwood District. This "Negro Wall Street" bustled with commercial activity. In 1921, jealously, land lust, and racism swelled in sectors of white Tulsa, and white rioters seized upon what some derogated as "Little Africa," leaving death and destruction in their wake. In an astounding resurrection, the community rose from the ashes of what was dubbed the Tulsa Race Riot with renewed vitality and splendor, peaking in the 1940s. In the succeeding decades, changed social and economic conditions sparked a prodigious downward spiral. Today's Greenwood District bears little resemblance to the black business mecca of yore. Instead, it has become part of something larger: an anchor to a rejuvenated arts, entertainment, educational, and cultural hub abutting downtown Tulsa. The Tulsa experience is, in many ways, emblematic of others throughout the country. Through context-setting text and scores of captioned photographs, Images of America: Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District provides a basic foundation for those interested in the history of Tulsa, its African American community, and race relations in the modern era. Particularly for students, the book can be an entry point into what is a fascinating piece of American history and a gateway to discoveries about race, interpersonal relations, and shared humanity.
Call Number: 976.686 J67tISBN: 9781439644560Publication Date: 2014-01-27
Tulsa Race Massacre
The Burning by
On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. 34 square blocks of Tulsa's Greenwood community, known then as the Negro Wall Street of America, were reduced to smoldering rubble. And now, 80 years later, the death toll of what is known as the Tulsa Race Riot is more difficult to pinpoint. Conservative estimates put the number of dead at about 100 (75% of the victims are believed to have been black), but the actual number of casualties could be triple that. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what happened, has recommended that restitution to the historic Greenwood Community would be good public policy and do much to repair theemotional as well as physical scars of this most terrible incident in our shared past. With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust of compelling fiction,The Burningwill recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.
Call Number: 976.686052 M182bISBN: 9780312272838Publication Date: 2001-11-02- Hush, Somebody's Callin' My Name: a photographic essay of survival, resilience and perseverance byCall Number: 976.686 T469Zt4ISBN: 9781436373524Publication Date: 2008-12-01
Reconstructing the Dreamland by
The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot was the country's bloodiest civil disturbance of the century. Thirty city blocks were burned to the ground, perhaps 150 died, and the prosperous black community of Greenwood, Oklahoma, was turned to rubble.Brophy draws on his own extensive research into contemporary accounts and court documents to chronicle this devastating riot, showing how and why the rule of law quickly eroded. Brophy shines his lights on mob violence and racism run amok, both on the night of the riot and the following morning.Equally important, he shows how the city government and police not only permitted looting, shootings, and the burning of Greenwood, but actively participated in it by deputizing white citizens haphazardly, giving out guns and badges, or sending men to arm themselves. Likewise, the National Guardacted unconstitutionally, arresting every black resident they found, leaving property vulnerable to the white mob.Brophy's stark narrative concludes with a discussion of reparations for victims of the riot through lawsuits and legislative action. That case has implications for other reparations movements, including reparations for slavery."Recovers a largely forgotten history of black activism in one of the grimmest periods of race relations.... Linking history with advocacy, Brophy also offers a reasoned defense of reparations for the riot's victims."--Washington Post Book World
Call Number: 976.686 B873rISBN: 9780195161038Publication Date: 2003-04-10
Riot and Remembrance by
A best-selling author investigates the causes of the twentieth century's deadliest race riot and how its legacy has scarred and shaped a community over the past eight decades. On a warm night in May 1921, thousands of whites, many deputized by the local police, swarmed through the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing scores of blacks, looting, and ultimately burning the neighborhood to the ground. In the aftermath, as many as 300 were dead, and 6,000 Greenwood residents were herded into detention camps. James Hirsch focuses on the de facto apartheid that brought about the Greenwood riot and informed its eighty-year legacy, offering an unprecedented examination of how a calamity spawns bigotry and courage and how it has propelled one community's belated search for justice. Tulsa's establishment and many victims strove to forget the events of 1921, destroying records pertaining to the riot and refusing even to talk about it. This cover-up was carried through the ensuing half-century with surprising success. Even so, the riot wounded Tulsa profoundly, as Hirsch demonstrates in a compelling combination of history, journalism, and character study. White Tulsa thrived, and the city became a stronghold of Klan activity as workingmen and high civic officials alike flocked to the Hooded Order. Meanwhile, Greenwood struggled as residents strove to rebuild their neighborhood despite official attempts to thwart them. As the decades passed, the economic and social divides between white and black worlds deepened. Through the 1960s and 1970s, urban renewal helped to finish what the riot had started, blighting Greenwood. Paradoxically, however, the events of 1921 saved Tulsa from the racial strife that befell so many other American cities in the 1960s, as Tulsans white and black would do almost anything to avoid a reprise of the riot. Hirsch brings the riot's legacy up to the present day, tracing how the memory of the massacre gradually revived as academics and ordinary citizens of all colors worked tirelessly to uncover evidence of its horrors. Hirsch also highlights Tulsa's emergence at the forefront of the burgeoning debate over reparations. RIOT AND REMEMBRANCE shows vividly, chillingly, how the culture of Jim Crow caused not only the grisly incidents of 1921 but also those of Rosewood, Selma, and Watts, as well as less widely known atrocities. It also addresses the cruel irony that underlies today's battles over affirmative action and reparations: that justice and reconciliation are often incompatible goals. Finally, Hirsch details how Tulsa may be overcoming its horrific legacy, as factions long sundered at last draw together.
Call Number: 976.6860049 H669rISBN: 9780618108138Publication Date: 2002-02-22- Tulsa, 1921 : reporting a massacre by The Tulsa Massacre was a result of racial animosity and mistrust within a culture of political and economic corruption. In its wake, black Tulsans were denied redress and even the right to rebuild on their own property, yet they ultimately prevailed and even prospered despite systemic racism and the rise during the 1920s of the second Ku Klux Klan.ISBN: 0806165839Publication Date: 2019
Women
- Behold the Walls byCall Number: University Archives (Non-circulating) 976.6 L965ZL9
- A Matter of Black and White by A Matter of Black and White is the personal story of an Oklahoma woman whose fight to gain an education formed a crucial episode in the civil rights movement. Born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, of parents only one generation removed from slavery, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher became the plaintiff in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that laid the foundation for the eventual desegregation of schools (and much else) in America. A Matter of Black and White resounds with almost universal human themes-childhood, school, friends, colleagues, community, and a love that lasted a lifetime.Call Number: 976.6 F533Zm5ISBN: 9780585156040Publication Date: 1996-01-01
- Ordinary Extraordinary African American Women: The Elders byISBN: 9780977841882Publication Date: 2017-01-31
A Step Toward Brown V. Board of Education: Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher and her fight to end segregation by
In 1946 a young woman named Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher (1924-1995) was denied admission to the University of Oklahoma College of Law because she was African American. The OU law school was an all-white institution in a town where African Americans could work and shop as long as they got out before sundown. But if segregation was entrenched in Norman, so was the determination of black Oklahomans who had survived slavery to stake a claim in the territory. This was the tradition that Ada Lois Sipuel sprang from, a tradition and determination that would sustain her through the slow, tortuous path of litigation to gaining admission to law school. A Step toward Brown v. Board of Education--the first book to tell Fisher's full story--is at once an inspiring biography and a remarkable chapter in the history of race and civil rights in America. Cheryl Elizabeth Brown Wattley gives us a richly textured picture of the black-and-white world from which Ada Lois Sipuel and her family emerged. Against this Oklahoma background Wattley shows Sipuel (who married Warren Fisher a year before she filed her suit) struggling against a segregated educational system. Her legal battle is situated within the history of civil rights litigation and race-related jurisprudence in the state of Oklahoma and in the nation. Hers was a test case organized by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and, as precedent, strike another blow against "separate but equal" public education. Fisher served as both a litigant, with Thurgood Marshall for counsel, and, later, a litigator; both a plaintiff and an advocate for the NAACP; and both a student and, ultimately, a teacher of the very history she had helped to write. In telling Fisher's story, Wattley also reveals a time and a place undergoing a profound transformation spurred by one courageous woman taking a bold step forward.
Call Number: 302.092 F533 W347sISBN: 9780806145457Publication Date: 2014-10-08
Trail Sisters: freedwomen in Indian Territory, 1850-1890 by
African American women enslaved by the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek Nations led lives ranging from utter subjection to recognized kinship. Regardless of status, during Removal, they followed the Trail of Tears in the footsteps of their slaveholders, suffering the same life-threatening hardships and poverty. As if Removal to Indian Territory weren?t cataclysmic enough, the Civil War shattered the worlds of these slave women even more, scattering families, destroying property, and disrupting social and family relationships. Suddenly they were freed, but had nowhere to turn. Freedwomen found themselves negotiating new lives within a labyrinth of federal and tribal oversight, Indian resentment, and intruding entrepreneurs and settlers. Remarkably they reconstructed their families and marshaled the skills to fashion livelihoods in a burgeoning capitalist environment. They sought education and forged new relationships with immigrant black women and men, managing to establish a foundation for survival. Linda Williams Reese is the first to trace the harsh and often bitter journey of these women from arrival in Indian Territory to free-citizen status in 1890. In doing so, she establishes them as no lesser pioneers of the American West than their Indian or other Plains sisters.
Call Number: 305.48896073 R329tISBN: 9780896728103Publication Date: 2013-04-15
Uncrowned Queens: African American women community builders of Oklahoma, 1907-2007 by
Fourth volume of biographies of African American women community leaders, focusing this time on Oklahoma.
Call Number: 976.605 N513uISBN: 9780972297745Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Oklahoma's Black Towns
- Acres of Aspiration: The All-Black Towns in Oklahoma byCall Number: 976.600496 J67aISBN: 9781571686640Publication Date: 2004-01-01
Black Towns, Black Futures by
Some know Oklahoma's Black towns as historic communities that thrived during the Jim Crow era--this is only part of the story. In this book, Karla Slocum shows that the appeal of these towns is more than their past. Drawing on interviews and observations of town life spanning several years, Slocum reveals that people from diverse backgrounds are still attracted to the communities because of the towns' remarkable history as well as their racial identity and rurality. But that attraction cuts both ways. Tourists visit to see living examples of Black success in America, while informal predatory lenders flock to exploit the rural Black economies. In Black towns, there are developers, return migrants, rodeo spectators, and gentrifiers, too. Giving us a complex window into Black town and rural life, Slocum ultimately makes the case that these communities are places for affirming, building, and dreaming of Black community success even as they contend with the sometimes marginality of Black and rural America.
ISBN: 9781469653969Publication Date: 2019-11-25- Land of the Fair God: The Development of Black Towns in Oklahoma, 1870-1910 by Oklahoma’s All Black Town Movement is important to contextualize larger black migration patterns during the nineteenth century. Oklahoma was at the center of black migration from surrounding states. In addition, it played an important role in the development of the Back-to-Africa Movement. Although both movements within the state were not large scale, black movement in and out of Oklahoma attracted media attention. Within this narrative, Native American law influenced how the federal government defined blackness throughout Oklahoma and created a debate concerning the definition of the term “freedman” in the United States following the Civil War. Analyzing the many facets of Oklahoma’s All Black Town Movement helps scholars understand race relations, economics, built environments, and nationalism.Publication Date: 2016
African Americans and Native Americans
African Creeks: Estelvste and the Creek Nation by
Among the Creeks, they were known as Estelvste--black people--and they had lived among them since the days of the first Spanish entradas. They spoke the same language as the Creeks, ate the same foods, and shared kinship ties. Their only difference was the color of their skin. This book tells how people of African heritage came to blend their lives with those of their Indian neighbors and essentially became Creek themselves. Taking in the full historical sweep of African Americans among the Creeks, from the sixteenth century through Oklahoma statehood, Gary Zellar unfolds a narrative history of the many contributions these people made to Creek history. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Zellar reveals how African people functioned as warriors, interpreters, preachers, medicine men, and even slave labor, all of which allowed the tribe to withstand the shocks of Anglo-American expansion. He also tells how they provided leaders who helped the Creeks navigate the onslaught of allotment, tribal dissolution, and Oklahoma statehood. In his compelling narrative, Zellar describes how African Creeks made a place for themselves in a tolerant Creek Nation in which they had access to land, resources, and political leverage--and how post-Civil War "reform" reduced them to the second-class citizenship of other African Americans. It is a stirring account that puts history in a new light as it adds to our understanding of the multi-ethnic nature of Indian societies.
Call Number: 973.04059738 Z51aISBN: 9780806138152Publication Date: 2007-04-15
Apartheid in Indian Country? Seeing Red over Black Disenfranchisement by
The binding persons of African descent and Native Americans trace back centuries. In Oklahoma, both free and enslaved Africans lived among the "Five Civilized Tribes" - the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole Nations. These tribes officially sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. After that internecine conflict, the tribes-except for the Chickasaws-adopted their respective "Freedmen." The term Freedmen embraced both formerly-enslaved persons of African ancestry, and those free persons of African ancestry who lived among the tribes. In the modern era, the tribes who granted citizenship to hide their Freedmen have sought to disenfranchise them. Freedmen descendants-persons of African ancestry with blood, affinity, and/or treaty ties to the Five Civilized Tribes-still struggle for recognition and inclusion. The Freedmen debate rages in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, where legal battles in tribal and federal courts have waged, and a confrontation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs over the issue threatens tribal sovereignty. The Cherokee controversy is both illustrative and emblematic of larger questions about the intersection of race, Indian identity, and Native American sovereignty, Johnson traces historical relations between African-American and Native Americans, particularly in Oklahoma, "Indian Country." He examines some legal, political, economic, social and moral issues surrounding the present controversy over the tribal citizenship of the Freedmen. Wrestling with the issues surrounding Freedmen identity and rights will illuminate and advance the American dialogue on race and culture.
Call Number: 976.600496 J67apISBN: 9781935632344Publication Date: 2012-11-01
The Color of the Land by
The Color of the Land brings the histories of Creek Indians, African Americans, and whites in Oklahoma together into one story that explores the way races and nations were made and remade in conflicts over who would own land, who would farm it, and who would rule it. This story disrupts expected narratives of the American past, revealing how identities--race, nation, and class--took new forms in struggles over the creation of different systems of property. Conflicts were unleashed by a series of sweeping changes: the forced "removal" of the Creeks from their homeland to Oklahoma in the 1830s, the transformation of the Creeks' enslaved black population into landed black Creek citizens after the Civil War, the imposition of statehood and private landownership at the turn of the twentieth century, and the entrenchment of a sharecropping economy and white supremacy in the following decades. In struggles over land, wealth, and power, Oklahomans actively defined and redefined what it meant to be Native American, African American, or white. By telling this story, David Chang contributes to the history of racial construction and nationalism as well as to southern, western, and Native American history.
Call Number: 305.8009766 C456cISBN: 9780807833650Publication Date: 2010-02-01
Contested Territory by
A history of the interaction between whites, Native Americans and African Americans in the Indian and Oklahoma Territories from the end of the Civil War until Oklahoma statehood in 1907. It addresses questions about the nature of American race relations, transcending the territorial boundaries.
Call Number: 976.6004 W636cISBN: 9780807125847Publication Date: 2000-10-01
Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds by
Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds explores the critically neglected intersection of Native and African American cultures. This interdisciplinary collection combines historical studies of the complex relations between blacks and Indians in Native communities with considerations and examples of various forms of cultural expression that have emerged from their intertwined histories. The contributors include scholars of African American and Native American studies, English, history, anthropology, law, and performance studies, as well as fiction writers, poets, and a visual artist. Essays range from a close reading of the 1838 memoirs of a black and Native freewoman to an analysis of how Afro-Native intermarriage has impacted the identities and federal government classifications of certain New England Indian tribes. One contributor explores the aftermath of black slavery in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, highlighting issues of culture and citizenship. Another scrutinizes the controversy that followed the 1998 selection of a Miss Navajo Nation who had an African American father. A historian examines the status of Afro-Indians in colonial Mexico, and an ethnographer reflects on oral histories gathered from Afro-Choctaws. Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds includes evocative readings of several of Toni Morrison's novels, interpretations of plays by African American and First Nations playwrights, an original short story by Roberta J. Hill, and an interview with the Creek poet and musician Joy Harjo. The Native American scholar Robert Warrior develops a theoretical model for comparative work through an analysis of black and Native intellectual production. In his afterword, he reflects on the importance of the critical project advanced by this volume. Contributors. Jennifer D. Brody, Tamara Buffalo, David A. Y. O. Chang, Robert Keith Collins, Roberta J. Hill, Sharon P. Holland, ku'ualoha ho'omnawanui, Deborah E. Kanter, Virginia Kennedy, Barbara Krauthamer, Tiffany M. McKinney, Melinda Micco, Tiya Miles, Celia E. Naylor, Eugene B. Redmond, Wendy S. Walters, Robert Warrior
Call Number: 305.8996073 C951ISBN: 9780822388401Publication Date: 2006-10-19
Oklahoma Black Cherokees by
Over the generations, Cherokee citizens became a conglomerate people. Early in the nineteenth century, tribal leaders adapted their government to mirror the new American model. While accommodating institutional slavery of black people, they abandoned the Cherokee matrilineal clan structure that once determined their citizenship. The 1851 census revealed a total population nearing 18,000, which included 1,844 slaves and 64 free blacks. What it means to be Cherokee has continued to evolve over the past century, yet the histories assembled here by Ty Wilson, Karen Coody Cooper and other contributing authors reveal a meaningful story of identity and survival.
ISBN: 9781439662212Publication Date: 2017
Race and the Cherokee Nation: Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century by
"We believe by blood only," said a Cherokee resident of Oklahoma, speaking to reporters in 2007 after voting in favor of the Cherokee Nation constitutional amendment limiting its membership. In an election that made headlines around the world, a majority of Cherokee voters chose to eject from their tribe the descendants of the African American freedmen Cherokee Indians had once enslaved. Because of the unique sovereign status of Indian nations in the United States, legal membership in an Indian nation can have real economic benefits. In addition to money, the issues brought forth in this election have racial and cultural roots going back before the Civil War. Race and the Cherokee Nation examines how leaders of the Cherokee Nation fostered a racial ideology through the regulation of interracial marriage. By defining and policing interracial sex, nineteenth-century Cherokee lawmakers preserved political sovereignty, delineated Cherokee identity, and established a social hierarchy. Moreover, Cherokee conceptions of race and what constituted interracial sex differed from those of blacks and whites. Moving beyond the usual black/white dichotomy, historian Fay A. Yarbrough places American Indian voices firmly at the center of the story, as well as contrasting African American conceptions and perspectives on interracial sex with those of Cherokee Indians. For American Indians, nineteenth-century relationships produced offspring that pushed racial and citizenship boundaries. Those boundaries continue to have an impact on the way individuals identify themselves and what legal rights they can claim today.
Call Number: 305.897557 Y26rISBN: 9780812240566Publication Date: 2008-01-15
The Seminole Freedmen by
Popularly known as "Black Seminoles," descendants of the Seminole freedmen of Indian Territory are a unique American cultural group. Now Kevin Mulroy examines the long history of these people to show that this label denies them their rightful distinctiveness. To correct misconceptions of the historical relationship between Africans and Seminole Indians, he traces the emergence of Seminole-black identity and community from their eighteenth-century Florida origins to the present day. Arguing that the Seminole freedmen are neither Seminoles, Africans, nor "black Indians," Mulroy proposes that they are maroon descendants who inhabit their own racial and cultural category, which he calls "Seminole maroon." Mulroy plumbs the historical record to show clearly that, although allied with the Seminoles, these maroons formed independent and autonomous communities that dealt with European American society differently than either Indians or African Americans did. Mulroy describes the freedmen's experiences as runaways from southern plantations, slaves of American Indians, participants in the Seminole Wars, and emigrants to the West. He then recounts their history during the Civil War, Reconstruction, enrollment and allotment under the Dawes Act, and early Oklahoma statehood. He also considers freedmen relations with Seminoles in Oklahoma during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although freedmen and Seminoles enjoy a partially shared past, this book shows that the freedmen's history and culture are unique and entirely their own.
Call Number: 976.60049607 M961sISBN: 9780806138657Publication Date: 2007-11-01
Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom by
This beautifully written book, now in its second edition, tells the haunting saga of a quintessentially American family. In the late 1790s, Shoe Boots, a famed Cherokee warrior and successful farmer, acquired an African slave named Doll. Over the next thirty years, Shoe Boots and Doll lived together as master and slave and also as lifelong partners who, with their children and grandchildren, experienced key events in American history?including slavery, the Creek War, the founding of the Cherokee Nation and subsequent removal of Native Americans along the Trail of Tears, and the Civil War. This is the gripping story of their lives, in slavery and in freedom. Meticulously crafted from historical and literary sources, Ties That Bind vividly portrays the members of the Shoeboots family. Doll emerges as an especially poignant character, whose life is mostly known through the records of things done to her?her purchase, her marriage, the loss of her children?but also through her moving petition to the federal government for the pension owed to her as Shoe Boots's widow. A sensitive rendition of the hard realities of black slavery within Native American nations, the book provides the fullest picture we have of the myriad complexities, ironies, and tensions among African Americans, Native Americans, and whites in the first half of the nineteenth century. Updated with a new preface and an appendix of key primary sources, this remains an essential book for students of Native American history, African American history, and the history of race and ethnicity in the United States.
ISBN: 9780520285637Publication Date: 2015-06-23
Education
Breaking Down Barriers: George McLaurin and the Struggle to End Segregated Education by
For nearly sixty years, the University of Oklahoma, in obedience to state law, denied admission to African Americans. Only in October 1948 did this racial barrier start to break down, when an elderly teacher named George McLaurin became the first African American to enroll at the university. McLaurin's case, championed by the NAACP, drew national attention and culminated in a U.S. Supreme Court decision. In Breaking Down Barriers, distinguished historian David W. Levy chronicles the historically significant--and at times poignant--story of McLaurin's two-year struggle to secure his rights. Through exhaustive research, Levy has uncovered as much as we can know about George McLaurin (1887-1968), a notably private person. A veteran educator, he was fully qualified for admission as a graduate student in the university's School of Education. When the university denied his application, solely on the basis of race, McLaurin received immediate assistance from the NAACP and its lead attorney Thurgood Marshall, who brilliantly defended his case in state and federal courts. On his very first day of class, as Levy details, McLaurin had to sit in a special alcove, separate from the white students in the classroom. Photographs of McLaurin in this humiliating position set off a firestorm of national outrage. Dozens of other African American men and women followed McLaurin to the university, and Levy reviews the many bizarre contortions that university officials had to perform, often against their own inclinations, to accord with the state's mandate to keep black and white students apart in classrooms, the library, cafeterias and dormitories, and the football stadium. Ultimately, in 1950, the U.S. Supreme Court, swayed by the arguments of Marshall and his co-counsel Robert Carter, ruled in McLaurin's favor. The decision, as Levy explains, stopped short of toppling the decades-old doctrine of "separate but equal." But the case led directly to the 1954 landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which finally declared that flawed policy unconstitutional.
ISBN: 9780806167220Publication Date: 2020-09-10
The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown by
In 1950 Ruth W. Brown, librarian at the Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Public Library, was summarily dismissed from her job after thirty years of exemplary service, ostensibly because she had circulated subversive materials. In truth, however, Brown was fired because she had become active in promoting racial equality and had helped form a group affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality. Louise S. Robbins tells the story of the political, social, economic, and cultural threads that became interwoven in a particular time and place, creating a strong web of opposition. This combination of forces ensnared Ruth Brown and her colleagues-for the most part women and African Americans-who championed the cause of racial equality. This episode in a small Oklahoma town almost a half-century ago is more than a disturbing local event. It exemplifies the McCarthy era, foregrounding those who labored for racial justice, sometimes at great cost, before the civil rights movement. In addition, it reveals a masking of concerns that led even Brown's allies to obscure the cause of racial integration for which she fought. Relevant today, Ruth Brown's story helps us understand the matrix of personal, community, state, and national forces that can lead to censorship, intolerance, and the suppression of individual rights.
Call Number: 020.89 B289Zr6ISBN: 9780585230146Publication Date: 2000-01-01
Langston University: A History by Call Number: 378.766 L285Ep3ISBN: 9780806115658Publication Date: 1979-09-01- The legacy of Dean Julien C. Monnet : Judge Luther Bohanon and the desegregation of Oklahoma City's public schools byCall Number: 370.19342 F834L 1984ISBN: 9780865460522
Race and the University by
In 1967, George Henderson, the son of uneducated Alabama sharecroppers, accepted a full-time professorship at the University of Oklahoma, despite his mentor's warning to avoid the "redneck school in a backward state." Henderson became the university's third African American professor, a hire that seemed to suggest the dissolving of racial divides. However, when real estate agents in the university town of Norman denied the Henderson family their first three choices of homes, the sociologist and educator realized he still faced some formidable challenges. In this stirring memoir, Henderson recounts his formative years at the University of Oklahoma, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He describes in graphic detail the obstacles that he and other African Americans faced within the university community, a place of "white privilege, black separatism, and campus-wide indifference to bigotry." As an adviser and mentor to young black students who wanted to do something about these conditions, Henderson found himself at the forefront of collective efforts to improve race relations at the university. Henderson is quick to acknowledge that he and his fellow activists did not abolish all vestiges of racial oppression. But they set in motion a host of institutional changes that continue to this day. In Henderson's words, "we were ordinary people who sometimes did extraordinary things." Capturing what was perhaps the most tumultuous era in the history of American higher education, Race and the University includes valuable recollections of former student activists who helped transform the University of Oklahoma into one of the nation's most diverse college campuses.
Call Number: 378.76637 A258Zh4ISBN: 9780806141299Publication Date: 2010-09-10
Biography
- Awakening to Equality by In 1945, Karl Lutze was a young white pastor assigned to an African American church in Muskogee, Oklahoma. His experiences ministering to Black congregations there and, later, in Tulsa provide a unique perspective on the early civil rights movement in Oklahoma and within the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran ChurchCall Number: 284.1092 L975ZL9ISBN: 9780826265326
- Black Gun, Silver Star: the life and legend of frontier marshal Bass Reeves by In The Story of Oklahoma, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves appears as one of “eight notable Oklahomans,” the “most feared U.S. marshal in the Indian country.” That Reeves was also an African American who had spent his early life as a slave in Arkansas and Texas made his accomplishments all the more remarkable. Black Gun, Silver Star tells Bass Reeves's story for the first time, sifting through fact and legend to discover the truth about one of the most outstanding peace officers in late-nineteenth-century America—and perhaps the greatest lawman of the Wild West era. Bucking the odds (“I’m sorry, we didn’t keep black people’s history,” a clerk at one of Oklahoma’s local historical societies answered to a query), Art T. Burton traces Reeves from his days of slavery to his soldiering in the Civil War battles of the Trans-Mississippi Theater to his career as a deputy U.S. marshal out of Fort Smith, Arkansas, beginning in 1875 when he worked under “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker. Fluent in Creek and other southern Native languages, physically powerful, skilled with firearms, and a master of disguise, Reeves was exceptionally adept at apprehending fugitives and outlaws and his exploits were legendary in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Black Gun, Silver Star restores this remarkable figure to his rightful place in the history of the American West.Call Number: 363.28208996 R332Zb9ISBN: 9780803205413Publication Date: 2006-07-01
Mirror to America by
John Hope Franklin lived through America's most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally protected racial segregation. A renowned scholar, he has explored that transformation in its myriad aspects, notably in his 3.5-million-copy bestseller, "From Slavery to Freedom." Born in 1915, he, like every other African American, could not help but participate: he was evicted from whites-only train cars, confined to segregated schools, threatened--once with lynching--and consistently subjected to racism's denigration of his humanity. Yet he managed to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard; become the first black historian to assume a full professorship at a white institution, Brooklyn College; and be appointed chair of the University of Chicago's history department and, later, John B. Duke Professor at Duke University. He has reshaped the way African American history is understood and taught and become one of the world's most celebrated historians, garnering over 130 honorary degrees. But Franklin's participation was much more fundamental than that. From his effort in 1934 to hand President Franklin Roosevelt a petition calling for action in response to the Cordie Cheek lynching, to his 1997 appointment by President Clinton to head the President's Initiative on Race, and continuing to the present, Franklin has influenced with determination and dignity the nation's racial conscience. Whether aiding Thurgood Marshall's preparation for arguing "Brown v. Board of Education" in 1954, marching to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, or testifying against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, Franklin has pushed the national conversation on race toward humanity and equality, a life long effort that earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1995. Intimate, at times revelatory, "Mirror to America" chronicles Franklin's life and this nation's racial transformation in the twentieth century, and is a powerful reminder of the extent to which the problem of America remains the problem of color.
Call Number: 973.0496073 F832Zf8ISBN: 9780374299446Publication Date: 2005-11-02
My Life and an Era by
Franklin (1879-1960) led an extraordinary life; from his youth in what was then Indian Territory to his practice of law in 20th-century Tulsa, he was witness to changes in politics, law and race relations which transformed the south-west. His autobiography presents a firsthand account of events.
Call Number: 340.92 F831Zf8ISBN: 9780807122136Publication Date: 1997-01-01- A Passion for Equality: The Life of Jimmy Stewart byCall Number: 973.0496073 S8495Zm6ISBN: 9781885596123Publication Date: 1999-01-01
Ralph Ellison by
The definitive biography of one of the most important American writers and cultural intellectuals of the twentieth century—Ralph Ellison, author of the masterpieceInvisible Man. In 1953, Ellison’s explosive story of an innocent young black man’s often surreal search for truth and his identity won him the National Book Award for fiction and catapulted him to national prominence. Ellison went on to earn many other honors, including two presidential medals and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, but his failure to publish a second novel, despite years of striving, haunted him for the rest of his life. Now, as the first scholar given complete access to Ellison’s papers, Arnold Rampersad has written not only a reliable account of the main events of Ellison’s life but also a complex, authoritative portrait of an unusual artist and human being. Born poor and soon fatherless in 1913, Ralph struggled both to belong to and to escape from the world of his childhood. We learn here about his sometimes happy, sometimes harrowing years growing up in Oklahoma City and attending Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Arriving in New York in 1936, he became a political radical before finally embracing the cosmopolitan intellectualism that would characterize his dazzling cultural essays, his eloquent interviews, and his historic novel. The second half of his long life brought both widespread critical acclaim and bitter disputes with many opponents, including black cultural nationalists outraged by what they saw as his elitism and misguided pride in his American citizenship. This biography describes a man of magnetic personality who counted Saul Bellow, Langston Hughes, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Richard Wilbur, Albert Murray, and John Cheever among his closest friends; a man both admired and reviled, whose life and art were shaped mainly by his unyielding desire to produce magnificent art and by his resilient faith in the moral and cultural strength of America. A magisterial biography of Ralph Waldo Ellison—a revelation of the man, the writer, and his times.
Call Number: 818 E47Zr1ISBN: 9780375408274Publication Date: 2007-04-24
Ralph Ellison by
AUTHOR. INTELLECTUAL. SOCIAL CRITIC. ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL WRITERS OF ALL TIME. RALPH ELLISON. Praise for Ralph Ellison Emergence of Genius "Dr. Lawrence Jackson's remarkable biography of Ralph Ellison is an essential contribution to the scholarship on one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Painstakingly researched and exhaustive, this compelling portrait of Ellison clarifies his genius--and his intellectual era--for a new century."--Charles Johnson, National Book Award Winner and author of Middle Passage "Lawrence Jackson's absorbing biography of Ralph Ellison makes a vital contribution to American literary history."--Ross Posnock, English Department, New York University, Author of Color and Culture: Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual "Professor Lawrence Jackson's painstaking documentation of Ralph Ellison's early life and the beginning of his literary career provides a much needed resource for Ellison's readers and critics."--Horace Porter, author of Jazz Country: Ralph Ellison in America and Director of African Studies at the University of Iowa "An eloquently written and exquisitely researched biography. There is nothing quite like it. Jackson breathes life into those hidden nooks and crannies of Ellison's youth that would later become cannon fodder for the grown Ellison's explorations. An utterly groundbreaking biography, the idea of Ralph Ellison will never be the same."--Jerry Watts, author of Heroism and the Black Intellectual: Ralph Ellison, Politics, and Afro-American Intellectual Life
Call Number: 818 E47Zj1ISBN: 9780471354147Publication Date: 2002-04-22- Roscoe Dunjee: Champion of Civil Rights byCall Number: 976.6 D918Zb9ISBN: 9781885596086Publication Date: 1998-01-01
The Sawners of Chandler: A Pioneering Power Couple in Pre-Civil Rights Oklahoma by
Juxtaposed against the grim realities of black life at the turn of the twentieth century, the lives of George and Lena Sawner shone like the blazing sun on an oven-hot August day in Oklahoma. Educated, professional, and economically stable, well-off by most standards, the Sawners lived the American dream, accompanied, periodically, by nightmarish reminders of the realities of race.
Call Number: 920.00929607 S271 J67sISBN: 9781681791180Publication Date: 2018-03-19
Slavery Narratives
The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives by
""I never talk to nobody 'bout this" was the response of one aged African American when asked by a Works Project Administration field worker to share memories of his life in slavery and after emancipation. He and other ex-slaves were uncomfortable with the memories of a time when black and white lives were interwoven through human bondage." "Yet the WPA field workers overcame the old people's reticence, and American West scholars T. Lindsay Baker and Julie P. Baker have collected all the known WPA Oklahoma "slave narratives" in this volume for the first time - including fourteen never published before. Their careful editorial notes detail what is known about the interviewers and the process of preparing the narratives." "The interviews were made in the late 1930s in Oklahoma. Although many African Americans had relocated there after emancipation in 1865, some interviewees had been slaves of Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, or Creeks in the Indian Territory. Their narratives constitute important primary sources on the foodways, agricultural practices, and home life of Oklahoma Indians." "This definitive, indexed edition will be an important resource for Oklahoma and Southwest historians as well as those interested in the history of African Americans, slavery, and Oklahoma's Five Tribes. For those studying the generation of African American men and women who over a century ago initiated black life in Oklahoma, the slave narratives are a major source of "collective memory.""
Call Number: 305.5670922 W1105ISBN: 9780585113319Publication Date: 1996-01-01
Children's Books
Bad News for Outlaws by
Coretta Scott King Author Award Read about the fascinating life of Bass Reeves, who escaped slavery to become the first African American Deputy US Marshal west of the Mississippi. Sitting tall in the saddle, with a wide-brimmed black hat and twin Colt pistols on his belt, Bass Reeves seemed bigger than life. Outlaws feared him. Law-abiding citizens respected him. As a peace officer, he was cunning and fearless. When a lawbreaker heard Bass Reeves had his warrant, he knew it was the end of the trail, because Bass always got his man, dead or alive. He achieved all this in spite of whites who didn't like the notion of a Black lawman. Born into slavery in 1838, Bass had a hard and violent life, but he also had a strong sense of right and wrong that others admired. When Judge Isaac Parker tried to bring law and order to the lawless Indian Territories, he chose Bass to be a Deputy US Marshal. Bass would quickly prove a smart choice. For three decades, Bass was the most feared and respected lawman in the territories. He made more than 3,000 arrests, and though he was a crack shot and a quick draw, he only killed fourteen men in the line of duty. The story of Bass Reeves is the story of a remarkable African American and a remarkable hero of the Old West.
Call Number: Education and Teaching Library j921 R332nISBN: 9780822567646Publication Date: 2009-08-01
Equal Justice: the courage of Ada Sipuel by
The law said America kept the black and white races separate but equal. From the time she was a young girl growing up in Chickasha, Oklahoma, however, Ada Sipuel learned that separate was never equal. Ada hoped to fight for equality for all people by becoming a lawyer, but the only law school in Oklahoma refused to admit her because of the color of her skin. Ada learned that civil disobedience could combat inequality. Her bravery set in motion a chain of events that broke down barriers of injustice in America.
Call Number: Education and Teaching Library j921 F533bISBN: 9781930709621Publication Date: 2006-12-01
The Hallelujah Flight by
The extraordinary story of James Banning, the first African-American pilot to fly across country During the Great Depression, the ace black pilot James Banning decided to fly from coast to coast to serve as an inspiration to people everywhere. So with a little ingenuity and a whole lot of heart, he fixed up the dilapidated OXX6 Eagle Rock plane with his co-pilot and mechanic, Thomas Allen, earning them the derisive nickname, "The Flying Hobos." But with the help of friends and family along the way who signed their names on the wings of the plane in exchange for food, fuel and supplies, Banning and Allen made it through treacherous weather and overcame ruthless prejudice to receive a heroes' welcome upon landing in New York on October 9, 1932. This exceptional story of determination and pride, shown through John Holyfield's energetic flight scenes and sweeping landscapes, will put you in the cockpit right alongside Banning and Allen as they complete the journey of a lifetime.
Call Number: Education and Teaching Library jE BiLISBN: 9780399247897Publication Date: 2010-01-07
The Legend of Bass Reeves by
Born into slavery, Bass Reeves became the most successful US Marshal of the Wild West. Many "heroic lawmen" of the Wild West, familiar to us through television and film, were actually violent scoundrels and outlaws themselves. But of all the sheriffs of the frontier, one man stands out as a true hero: Bass Reeves. He was the most successful Federal Marshal in the US in his day. True to the mythical code of the West, he never drew his gun first. He brought hundreds of fugitives to justice, was shot at countless times, and never hit. Bass Reeves was a black man, born into slavery. And though the laws of his country enslaved him and his mother, when he became a free man he served the law, with such courage and honor that he became a legend. From the Hardcover edition.
Call Number: Education and Teaching Library jF PauISBN: 9780385746618Publication Date: 2006-08-08
No Place Like Home: A Story about an All-Black, All-American Town by Call Number: Education and Teaching Library OSU Writing Project 813 J66454nISBN: 9781571680990
Searching for Sarah Rector by
The incredible and little-known story of Sarah Rector, once the wealthiest Black woman in America, from Coretta Scott King Honor Award winner Tonya Bolden Searching for Sarah Rector brings to light the intriguing mystery of Sarah Rector, who was born into an impoverished family in 1902 in Indian Territory and later was famously hailed by the Chicago Defender as "the wealthiest colored girl in the world." Author Tonya Bolden sets Rector's rags-to-riches tale against the backdrop of American history, including the creation of Indian Territory; the making of Oklahoma, with its Black towns and boomtowns; and the wild behavior of many greedy and corrupt adults. At the age of eleven, Sarah was a very rich young girl. Even so, she was powerless . . . helpless in the whirlwind of drama--and danger--that swirled around her. Then one day word came that she had disappeared. This is her story, and the story of other children like her, filled with ups and downs, bizarre goings-on, and a heap of crimes. Out of a trove of primary documents, including court and census records, as well as interviews with family members, Bolden painstakingly pieces together the events of Sarah's life.
Call Number: Educationa and Teaching Library j921 R311bISBN: 9781419708466Publication Date: 2014-01-07
Someday Is Now by
"Not only does this book highlight an important civil rights activist, it can serve as an introduction to child activism as well as the movement itself. Valuable." -- Kirkus Reviews starred review "Relatable and meaningful ... A top addition to nonfiction collections." -- School Library Journal starred review More than a year before the Greensboro sit-ins, a teacher named Clara Luper led a group of young people to protest the segregated Katz drugstore by sitting at its lunch counter. With simple, elegant art, Someday Is Now tells the inspirational story of this unsung hero of the Civil Rights movement. As a child, Clara Luper saw how segregation affected her life. When she grew up, Clara led the movement to desegregate Oklahoma stores and restaurants that were closed to African Americans. With courage and conviction, she led young people to "do what had to be done." Perfect for early elementary age kids in encouraging them to do what is right and stand up for what is right, even at great cost, this is a powerful story about the power of nonviolent activism. Someday Is Now challenges young people to ask how they will stand up against something they know is wrong. Kids are inspired to follow the lessons of bravery taught by civil rights pioneers like Clara Luper. This moving title includes additional information on Clara Luper's extraordinary life, her lessons of nonviolent resistance, and a glossary of key civil rights people and terms.
Call Number: Education and Teaching Library j921 L965rISBN: 9781633224988Publication Date: 2018-08-07
