Unit 5
War and Development
Governor Charles N.
Haskell
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The states first governor
March 1907 Haskell became
publisher of the New State Tribune
Haskell’s first official act as governor
of the State of Oklahoma was to
prevent Standard Oil Company from
connecting a pipeline from
Bartlesville into Kansas.
Haskell’s action gave the state
government time to decide upon
necessary regulations for governing
the pipeline industry before pipelines
entered the state.
The Oklahoma State Penitentiary
was built at McAlester during
Haskell’s administration.
Moving the State Capital
 Haskell’s administration is best known for the removal of the state
capital from Guthrie to Oklahoma City. The location of the Capital
had been a matter of dispute since territorial days.
 The controversy began with the Organic Act in 1890 when
Territorial Government was approved. Guthrie was named by that
act as the meeting place of the first legislature.
 However the act also stated that the lawmaking body and the
governor should name a permanent location as soon as they
found it necessary. Some contending cities were granted other
prizes to satisfy their hopes for importance in the Territory and
later the state.
 Stillwater received OSU, Edmond UCO, Norman OU
Moving Capital cont.
 IN 1906 Bird McGuire of Pawnee was a delegate to Congress. He
saw a provision attached to the Enabling Act naming Guthrie as
temporary state capital until 1913.
 An election was set for June 14, 1910 to name the capital site.
Oklahoma City, Guthrie, and Shawnee were the Choices offered to
the citizens.
 Before the Governor signed the proclamation announcing the
election he changed the date from Tuesday June 14 to Saturday
June 11. This meant that the results would become known on a
Sunday when business offices were closed.
 Of the 135,000 votes counted almost 100,000 were for OKC. The
governor arranged for a special train to OKC and contacted his
Secretary W.B. Anthony to meet him there with Secretary of State
Bill Cross and the State Seal
Moving the Capital cont.
 With the help of the governor’s chief clerk, Paul Nesbitt, and two
other employees of the governor’s office Earl Keys and Porter
Spaulding, the state seal and the state recording book were
removed from the vault and spirited out of the building through a
watchful crowd of self-appointed guards. The articles were
concealed in a bundle of laundry which Anthony claimed to have
left in the Governors office earlier.
 Several legends survive concerning the transporting of the seal to
OKC. Some say it was sent in a limo that was waiting outside the
Guthrie office building. Others say an African-American man riding
a mule carried it into the city. And others claim it went by train.
 However it was done it was done successfully. No real records
were kept on the subject
Moving cont.
 Lawsuits were filed and on November 15 the
State Supreme Court ruled that the petition for
election had contained a fatal error. It had not
begun with the question, “Shall it be adopted.”
The election therefore was void.
 The governor called a special session, he
appealed too the governing body in the name
of the people, pointing out that they had made
their wishes known through a public election.
The legislature ratified OKC as the new capital
on December 16, 1910.
Oil fields and Boom Towns
 The oil industry moved into the state at the turn of the century, and
in 1905 the famous Glenn Pool was discovered on the Ida Glenn
farm, ten miles south of Tulsa.
 The greatest problem of the big producers was transportation.
While oil from other areas was bringing more than $2 a barrel
prices at Glenn Pool from 25 cents to 40 cents per barrel because
of the problem of getting the oil out of the field.
 By statehood the first pipelines had opened and in October 1907
the first Glenn Pool oil reached the refineries in Port Arthur Texas.
The Glenn Pool brought several large companies into Oklahoma,
such as the Texas Company (Texaco) , Gulf Oil Company, and
Standard Oil of New Jersey.
Boom towns cont.
 Boom towns sprang up in every oil field, creating law enforcement
problems. Where a small village, or no town at all, had existed
before, suddenly thousands of people came. Many were
speculators and investors, and some were small business people
who followed the oil booms, supplying customers with products
and services.
 When a field was drilled out, the drillers began to leave and so did
everyone else. The boom towns soon became ghost towns or
returned to the size of small villages. Kiefer and Cushing were two
such boom towns.
 The Oklahoma oil fields were still booming when the United States
declared war on Germany in 1917. During World War I, oil was
one of the state’s major contributions to the war effort.
The Capital Building
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Construction of the new capitol
building had begun during
Governor Lee Cruce’s
administration in June, 1914, and
was completed in time for the
legislature to meet in its new
chambers during the 1917
session. The original plans for
the capitol building had included
a dome, for which there was not
enough money appropriated, and
the legislature agreed to
postpone adding it.
During the Frank Keating
administration, construction on a
dome was begun, and the new
dome was dedicated on
November 16, 2002.
Oklahoman’s in WWI
 The first military units called from Oklahoma to serve a national
cause were Oklahoma Territory’s Troop D and Troops L and M
from Indian Territory. These men served in the 1st United States
Volunteer Cavalry commanded by Colonel Leonard Wood and Lt.
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War of
1898.
 After statehood, the Territorial Guard became the Oklahoma
National Guard, and guardsmen were called to active duty in 1916
to serve under General John J. Pershing to protect the U.S.Mexican border.
 Those who served in Mexico returned home just in time for World
War I. Oklahoma’s guardsmen shipped out with the 36th Infantry,
the 42nd Infantry (known as the Rainbow Division), and the 90th
Infantry Division (also called the Texas-Oklahoma Division).
WWI cont.
 The first Oklahomans to arrive in France were those in the 36th
Infantry Division.
 When the war ended on November 11, 1918 — at the eleventh
hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — 90,527
Oklahomans, including 5,000 African-Americans, had served their
country’s cause. Of these, 4,154 were wounded in battle, 502
were missing in action, 1,064 were killed, and 502 died of disease.
 While the men were away fighting the war, the women were at
home running things. They worked in munitions factories, in
stores, on streetcars and on railroads. Women’s suffrage, or voting
rights, became an issue. In 1918, at the close of the war,
Oklahoma voters passed a state constitutional amendment giving
Oklahoma’s women the right to vote, two years before the national
amendment was adopted.
Alice Mary Robertson
 In 1920 Alice Mary
Robertson became the
second woman ever to
be elected to the United
States Congress.
 During her short
legislative career, Alice
Mary Robertson became
the first woman to
preside over a session of
the House of
Representatives.
Tulsa Race Riot
 The postwar period also brought a great deal of racial tension to
the nation.
 This racial tension helped set the scene for the Tulsa race riot of
1921, billed by the New York Times as “the worst race riot in
history.”
 The situation began when Dick Rowland, a nineteen-year-old
bootblack in Tulsa, delivered a package to the Drexel Building
downtown. He rode the elevator with Mrs. Sarah Page, a young
white woman who was working as the elevator operator. Upon
leaving the elevator, Rowland stumbled and stepped on Mrs.
Page’s foot. Mrs. Page became frightened and screamed.
Rowland, also frightened, ran from the building. Mrs. Page
claimed Rowland had tried to assault her, and the young AfricanAmerican man was arrested the following day.
Race Riot cont.
 Following Rowland’s arrest, the Tulsa Tribune printed the story of
the incident, including false statements concerning torn clothing
and scratches on Mrs. Page’s face. Despite the denials by Tulsa’s
chief of police, county sheriff, and mayor that any harm had been
done to the woman, and despite the admission of the managing
editor of the Tulsa Tribune that the statements about Mrs. Page’s
facial scratches and torn clothes were false, anger had been
aroused among the city’s whites.
 Lynch talk began to circulate. By 7:00 p.m. on May 31, 1921, a
crowd of white men were gathering around the County
Courthouse. The jail in which Rowland was being held was on the
third floor.
Race Riot cont.
 By 9:30 p.m., a crowd of African-American men began to gather,
also, determined not to allow Rowland to be lynched.
Approximately 2,000 white men had gathered, and groups of
African-American men were circling the block in cars. Several of
both groups were reportedly armed. Pleas from law enforcement
officials for the crowd to disperse were ignored.
 Some seventy-five African-American men exited the cars and
began milling with the white crowd. This incensed several of the
white men, and one white man tried to disarm an African-American
man. During the ensuing struggle, the weapon discharged and the
chaos began. Several shots were fired, and one white man sitting
in his car a block away was killed by a stray bullet. When one
African-American man was wounded and ambulances arrived to
attend him, white rioters surrounded him and refused to let the
ambulance attendants remove him. He died where he lay.
Race Riot cont.
 By midnight, factions had formed combat lines along
both sides of the railroad tracks which separated the
African-American section from the white section of
town. The worst fighting occurred between midnight
and dawn of Wednesday, June 1. White mobs
infiltrated the African-American areas, looting and
burning the entire district and preventing firefighters
from combating the fires.
 When the riot was over, between thirty and forty blocks
of homes and businesses had been burned in the
African-American sector of Tulsa.
Race Riot cont.
 In Tulsa during the riot, white soldiers, law
officers, and deputized volunteers disarmed
African-Americans and took them prisoner.
African-American prisoners were taken to
Convention Hall, where they were searched
and then transported to various holding camps
around the city. White rioters, on the other
hand, were simply disarmed and sent home.
 The total official death count was thirty- six —
twenty-six African-Americans and ten whites
The Ku Klux Klan
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On Thanksgiving night, 1915, outside Atlanta, Georgia, Colonel William
Joseph Simmons and a handful of supporters resurrected the terror of the
South, the Ku Klux Klan. By the 1920s, the Klan had reached a peak of
power never before achieved, and Oklahoma was a prime Klan state.
It was a ripe time for the basic Klan doctrines of patriotism, Protestantism,
white supremacy, and law and order.
Other segments of society were ignoring law and order by drinking
bootleg liquor and participating in gambling and other unlawful forms of
entertainment. A whole new vocabulary had to be learned in order to
participate in the activities. A bootlegger was a man who stuffed his
cowboy boots with small, flat bottles of illegal liquor. A moonshiner
distilled his corn liquor by the light of the moon. A speakeasy was an
establishment where a patron knocked on the door and whispered the
secret code word or the name of a trusted person in order to be admitted.
Membership in the KKK grew to more than 100,000 in the state.
Crime and Criminals
 Crime was a big business nationwide in the twenties and thirties.
Prohibition had spawned gangs of illegal liquor traffickers and
sellers of other vices. Bank robbers blasted their way around the
nation, and some of them came from the depressed areas of
eastern Oklahoma. George “Machine Gun” Kelly and his wife,
Kathryn, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and Charles “Pretty
Boy” Floyd all made the most-wanted list of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
 Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed by law officers, but
“Machine Gun” and Kathryn Kelly were captured and convicted of
kidnapping Oklahoma City oilman Charles Urschel. They were
sent to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
George “Machine Gun” Kelly
Pretty Boy Floyd
Bonnie and Clyde
The Great Depression
 On October 29, 1929, the stock market plum meted
after a meteoric rise. A record 16 million shares were
sold on the stock exchange floor, and stock prices fell
an average of 40 points each. The stock market crash
is generally considered the beginning of the U.S.
plunge into the Great Depression.
 During the first two years of the Depression, farm
prices fell 30 percent, but the taxes the farmers paid
and the prices they paid for necessities stayed high.
 Between 1930 and 1935 more than 750,000 farms
were lost through foreclosures and bankruptcy sales
nationwide.
Governor William H.
Murray
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Although Oklahoma farmers and
farmers nationwide were
suffering the ravages of
depression, William H. Murray
believed that the only lasting
society was an agrarian society.
Alfalfa Bill” Murray believed in the
family farm, the yeoman farmer,
the values of Thomas Jefferson,
and the greatness of the
Democratic Party. He believed in
equal distribution of arable land
(land suitable for raising crops),
and he advocated laws to
prevent accumulation of large
tracts of land by corporations or
foreign owners.
Murray cont.
 Without funds, Alfalfa Bill borrowed $40 from a
Tishomingo bank and launched a campaign for
governor. He toured the state in a used car, stopping to
sit curbside, eating his lunch from a paper sack and
talking politics with citizens on street corners. He was
often unshaven and unkempt, but many unemployed
workers and tenant farmers identified with him.
 William H. Murray advertised himself as “the common
man,” a man of the people, and he was elected. He
borrowed $250 to attend his own inaugural ball, which
was a square dance with the new governor as the
caller.
Murray cont.
 Depression conditions were growing worse.
 Wheat prices dropped from $1 a bushel to thirty-eight
cents a bushel. Western Oklahoma depended on the
wheat crop. Soon the roads were filled with families
moving west — tenant farmers looking for agricultural
work. Governor Murray asked for legislative
appropriations to furnish free seed and emergency
food rations for the needy.
 Despite his concern for the state’s poor, Murray
opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policy and
made overt efforts to prevent its coming to the state.
Murray cont.
 William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray was the most colorful,
controversial figure in the history of state government.
Many loved him. Many hated him. Few were indifferent.
 He believed in the benefits of an agrarian society to the
extent that he rejected industrialization, urbanization,
and centralization of governmental power. Yet he
wielded the power of the governor’s office more fiercely
than any preceding governor of Oklahoma. Although he
failed in some areas, he succeeded in making the state
government financially sound during the worst
economic crisis in national history.
The Dust Bowl
 In 1933 a drought hit western Oklahoma, and
with it, the high winds of the Great Plains
turned that part of the state and parts of Texas
and Kansas into the “Dust Bowl.”
 Debilitating heat, clouds of sand and dirt, and
swarms of grasshoppers and locusts plagued
the residents of the Panhandle. Tons of
Oklahoma topsoil were carried off by the wind
and scattered across the country.
Dust Bowl cont.
As their forebears had come to the
territories seeking a better life, these
migrants left Oklahoma in search of a
better life. Both desperate and
courageous they loaded their
belongings and their families onto their
vehicles and traveled west in search of
jobs they had heard about in the fruitful
fields of Arizona, New Mexico, and
California. Though many of them were
from Arkansas, Kansas, Texas,
Colorado, and Missouri, they all
became known as “Okies.” The Grapes
of Wrath, a novel by John Steinbeck
published in 1939, was a best-selling
book telling the story of the plight of a
migrant family from Oklahoma. Through
the popularity of the book, the name
Okie became a permanent part of the
American vocabulary.
Will Rogers and Wiley Post
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In August, 1935, the deaths of two
Oklahomans shocked the nation and
especially the state. Will Rogers, an
internationally known humorist-actorjournalist, and Wiley Post, an
internationally famous pilot, were
killed in a plane crash near Point
Barrow, Alaska.
Wiley Post, in 1933, the first man to
fly solo around the world, was the
adventurer who had put pride into the
hearts of Oklahomans otherwise
humbled by the Depression. The
state mourned its two favorite sons,
and for many, it seemed that the only
bright spots of the decade were
gone.
Woody Guthrie
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During the years 1936 to 1940, some
309,000 Oklahomans emigrated to
other parts of the country in the
second stage of the great Okie
migration. Ninety percent of them
blamed the drought or unemployment
for their move.
One of the migrants of the thirties
was an Okemah folksinger named
Woody Guthrie, his folksongs were
among the most meaningful in the
country’s social history. Composer of
“This Land Is Your Land,” “Riding in
My Car,” “California Blues,” “Pretty
Boy Floyd,” “Tom Joad,” and others,
Woody was asked to record his Dust
Bowl ballads for the Library of
Congress in 1940.
Marland administration
 Ernest W. Marland succeeded
Alfalfa Bill Murray in the
governor’s mansion. Born in
Pennsylvania, Marland had
come to Oklahoma and had
established an oil empire at
one time worth $85 million.
 With 150,000 Oklahomans
unemployed and 700,000
drawing some kind of relief,
Marland had devised a state
relief aid plan that became
known during his campaign
as the little new deal
WWII and the
Division
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The United States entered World War II
during Phillips’s administration, following
the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Anticipating American involvement in the
war, President Roosevelt mobilized the
Oklahoma National Guard in 1940. In
1923, when the Guard was expanded to a
division, it was designated the 45th Infantry
Division.
The original insignia for the 45th resembled
a gold swastika on a red background — an
Indian “good luck” sign. However, when the
swastika became infamous as the Nazi
symbol with the rise of Adolph Hitler, the
original symbol was abandoned.
In 1940, the Indian “thunderbird” symbol
was adopted in yellow on a red diamond
field, and the members of the 45th Infantry
became known as the Thunderbirds.
th
45
Infantry
45th cont.
 At one time, American military codes were easily broken by
German communications experts, and American soldiers often
found themselves stopped by enemy soldiers with advance
information. The “codes” of the 45th Infantry Division were never
broken, however, because they used communications people who
were members of Oklahoma’s Indian tribes. The codes were not
codes at all. They were native Indian languages. These men were
called “code talkers.”
 The Thunderbirds were always “gainers,” too. They were the only
division that never lost an inch of ground. General George S.
Patton, Jr., praised the 45th Infantry with these words: “Born at
sea, baptized in blood, your fame will never die. Your division is
one of the best, if not the very best, division in the history of
American arms.”
Governor Robert S. Kerr
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Oklahoma elected a new governor
during the war. Robert S. Kerr,
elected in 1942, was the first
governor actually born in the state.
An attorney and oilman, one of the
founders of the Kerr-McGee Oil
Company, Kerr was born in a log
cabin near Ada in the Chickasaw
Nation.
Kerr sought to draw industry into the
state, and he did a great deal to
improve Oklahoma’s image in the
nation.
Kerr was almost solely responsible
for the Arkansas River Navigation
Project. This project opened the
Arkansas River to handle trade and
transport between inland Oklahoma
and the Gulf of Mexico.