Chapter 6 | Conclusion
Conclusion
A lot of changes took place in Oklahoma during the years leading up to statehood. One thing that makes Oklahoma an especially interesting state is how much promise the idea of Oklahoma held for so many different groups of people. Women did not get the right to vote (aside from in school board elections) until 1918, but Oklahoma nevertheless offered many women opportunities they did not have elsewhere. For many of the new homesteaders who poured into Oklahoma ahead of statehood, Oklahoma was their last best chance to acquire land and carve out a better life for themselves and their families. This was true for African Americans who flocked to cities like Langston. This was true for new immigrants who traveled to the United States and eventually to Oklahoma from countries like Germany, Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia), Poland, and Italy. This was true for poor white southerners desperate to own land that they could farm. But the cost was great.
The dispossession of Indigenous land and loss of tribal sovereignty were central to the making of Oklahoma. The reassertion of tribal sovereignty, the preservation of Indigenous language and culture, and the ongoing negotiation between the state and its thirty-nine Indigenous Nations would define Oklahoma well into the next century. Oklahoma has been both a place of great dreams and a place of intense hardship. The next chapter explores the challenges faced by farmers and other groups who so desperately clung to hopes for peace and prosperity in the face of great state, national, and global turmoil.
The students and teachers of Rural School District No. 35 in western Oklahoma near Arapaho in Custer County assemble for a photograph in front of their one-room schoolhouse in 1910. Free public education was required in the Oklahoma Constitution of 1907. Often this meant a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher for grades 1–8.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
This Oklahoma State Fair poster from 1912 was placed in the Oklahoma Century Chest on April 22, 1913, at the First Lutheran Church in Oklahoma City. When the chest was opened one hundred years later on April 22, 2013, the poster was in excellent condition.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Short Answer Questions
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What was the Sequoyah Movement? Which groups supported this statehood plan? Why?
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Identify two Progressive movement ideals that influenced the new state of Oklahoma.
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How did the Enabling Act help to create the single state of Oklahoma?
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Explain why Black Oklahoman leaders like E. P. McCabe were disappointed in Senate Bill 1.
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What does it mean that African Americans and tribal members were disenfranchised under the new state government?
Short Response Questions
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What was gained and what was lost when Indian Territory became the state of Oklahoma? In your response, be sure to include the perspectives of the different groups of people who lived in Oklahoma at the time.
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How did the national Progressive movement influence the Oklahoma Constitution? In your response, be sure to include two progressive ideals that were included in the new state constitution.