Conclusion

The decade following statehood was not an easy one for many Oklahomans. Women saw their social status and opportunities decrease. African Americans lost what rights they had enjoyed for a time after the Civil War, as Jim Crow laws spread across the young state. Indigenous people lost more land even as white people forced them to assimilate. At the same time the US government dismantled tribal governments and sovereignty rights. Farmers faced uncertain weather patterns, fluctuations in crop prices, and sharp increases in rent and taxes. Labor unions organized to protect the rights of workers but sometimes exploited them too. Socialists appealed to rural Oklahoma farmers and laborers both through genuine efforts to help them and through corrupt plots to mislead and incite them. A public health crisis threatened to overrun the state hospitals as the flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919 raged throughout the country and eventually much of the world.

FIG. 7.17

Wanada Parker, daughter of Comanche chief Quanah Parker

Wanada Parker, daughter of Comanche chief Quanah Parker, attended Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma and Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. She worked at the Fort Sill Indian School and the Fort Sill Indian Hospital in Lawton. In addition, Wanada Parker starred in the 1920 silent film The Daughter of Dawn set in the Wichita Mountains of southwest Oklahoma. The all-Indigenous cast featured three hundred Kiowas and Comanches.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Oklahoma symbolized promise and opportunity, yet many Oklahomans suffered greatly in the years leading up to and during the First World War. This was true across racial and ethnic lines. This was true for women and men. For rich and poor. For those in rural areas and those living in cities. The loss of life in war and from the flu epidemic devastated many families. That is not to say that people’s determination and optimism went away. It did not. As Oklahomans looked ahead to the dawn of a new decade, many celebrated the Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding’s call for a “return to normalcy” in the election of 1920 (though only a minority of Oklahomans voted for him). But “normal” proved elusive. Women finally secured the right to vote with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 (it came two years earlier in Oklahoma), though buying property in their own names and holding elected positions became more difficult, not less. Many of the issues Oklahomans confronted in the previous decade spilled over into the 1920s. New immigration restrictions were put in place. The KKK grew in power and popularity. And the brewing racial tensions erupted in Tulsa in what we now understand was the worst race massacre in American history. The return to normalcy would have to wait.