Frontier Women of Oklahoma in the 19th & Early 20th Century: What Were They Up Against?

10/14/2024

Women Who Pioneered Oklahoma: Stories from the WPA Narratives, edited by Terri M. Baker and Connie Oliver Henshaw, 2007.

I. Women Who Pioneered Oklahoma: Stories from the WPA Narratives.

Where did you learn about women on Oklahoma's frontier: television, movies, novels? Have you noticed gaps in the popular record?

You can fill in many of those gaps with a nonfiction book edited by Terri M. Baker and Connie Oliver Henshaw,

Women Who Pioneered Oklahoma: Stories from the WPA Narratives,
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2007.

Baker and Henshaw's work drew from the Oklahoma Indian Pioneer Papers, a written record of 11,000 interviews conducted throughout the state of Oklahoma in 1936-1937 with people the "fieldworkers believed knew about pioneer life and had experiences that should be recorded."

The typed pages of the 11,000 interviews were bound into 112 volumes. That extensive record would not have been possible without a grant from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) secured by the University of Oklahoma in conjunction with the Oklahoma Historical Society.

One of the many things that I enjoyed about the book is that it includes interviews with African-American, Anglo, and Native American women who lived the harsh life of the 19th- and early 20th-century frontier. Baker and Henshaw grouped selected portions of interviews to depict aspects of the women's lives, for example, making a home, facing adversity, and living with lawlessness.

The voices of the frontier women are eloquent.

Twisters: A New Movie For You!

7/20/2024

Color image of movie poster for

"Twisters" the 2024 film starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos.

Take it from three generations of flat-landers who saw the new "Twisters" movie on opening day in Wichita, Kansas. It's a great disaster film with plenty of action and a bit of romance. We think you'll like it.

As an Oklahoman, I thoroughly enjoyed the on-location scenes created under the watchful eye of director Lee Isaac Chung. Whether in Oklahoma City, Okarche, Midwest City, Cashion, Chickasha, Yukon, or the surrounding countryside, the landscape suited the time and place of the story: contemporary Oklahoma in a wild spring season of exceptionally strong tornados.

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as the leading lady, Kate Cooper. This young and idealistic savant storm-watcher and chaser wants to change the world by discovering a way to stop a tornado in its tracks.

Can anyone do that?

Is it possible to tame a tornado? Short answer: No. A NOAA scientist explains why."

--National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
U.S. Department of Commerce

Women's History Month - March 2023 - & Notable Women of Oklahoma

3/2/2023

Updated: 3/11/2023

Multi-colored banner.

I. What is it?

Women’s History Month in the United States occurs in March of each year to:
- celebrate the achievements women have made throughout American history
- recognize all that remains to be done.

When did it start?

1987. The U.S. Congress designated March as “Women’s History Month.” Between 1988 and 1994, Congress passed successive resolutions requesting and authorizing the U.S. President to proclaim Women’s History Month. Since 1995, presidents have issued annual proclamations of Women’s History Month.

Antecedents. The origin story of Women’s History Month, however, began far earlier in the labor protests carried out by women in the nation’s paid workforce.

1857. Most notably, a one-day strike and march by hundreds of women from the textile and needles factories in New York City on March 8, 1857, made history.
- Fed up with life-threatening workplace conditions, low pay, and excruciating hours, the women took to the streets.
- Their day of action initiated a labor movement that, due to the obstruction by powerful business interests prioritizing profit over fairness, required decades of hard effort to create positive change.

1909. In the USA, the first Woman’s Day celebration took place in New York City.
1980’s. By the early 1980s, cities and states across the country were holding Women’s Day celebrations.
1980. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the week of March 8 as “Women’s History Week.”
1981. The U.S. Congress established the second week of March as “National Women’s History Week.”
1987. The U.S. Congress designated March as “Women’s History Month.”

The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any.”
--Alice Walker (1944- ) American writer, poet, and activist.

Is There a Drought Where You Live, Too?

10/25/2022

It rained yesterday morning—a gentle shower that disappeared into the oh-so-dry earth where I live. Everyone is grateful.

Map of Kansas, USA, with color-coded drought conditions, October 1, 2022

Current U.S. Drought Monitor Conditions for Kansas, October 18, 2022

In early October, Governor Laura Kelly approved updated drought declarations for Kansas counties—all 105 of them. Take your pick. Watch, warning, or emergency drought status, Kansas has it.

Whew.

The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) also keeps an eye on drought. Perhaps you've seen some of their color-coded maps similar to the one pictured above for Kansas.

The NIDIS emphasizes that several drought indicators, for example,

precipitation
temperature
streamflow
groundwater and reservoir levels
soil moisture, and snowpack

should be examined in order to paint a complete picture.

Armed with facts, the NIDIS doesn’t mince words. Droughts fall into one of its four categories.

Moderate drought (tan on the map)
Severe drought (orange)
Extreme drought (bright red)
Exceptional drought (reddish-brown)

Current US Drought Monitor Conditions for Kansas, USA, October 18, 2018

Description of Current U.S. Drought Monitor Conditions for Kansas, October 18, 2022

Do You Know Oklahoma?

9/7/2022

For in Oklahoma, all the experiences that went into the making of the nation have been speeded up. Here all the American traits have been intensified.

The one who can interpret Oklahoma can grasp the meaning of America in the modern world."

--Angie Debo, Ph.D., Oklahoma Foot-loose and Fancy-free,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1949, 1987.

Color image of the portrait of Angie Debo that is hanging in the rotunda of the Oklahoma State Capitol

Dr. Angie Debo, Author and Historian, portrait by Charles Banks Wilson.

The author Michael Wallis described Angie Debo (1890-1988) as “the distinguished historian, teacher, author and editor, an inspiration to so many others, and an Oklahoma pioneer who deserves nothing less than sainthood.”

In 1940, And Still the Waters Run--probably the most important of Dr. Debo's many award-winning books--was published by Princeton University Press.

At the time, the University of Oklahoma Press had declined to publish her meticulously researched nonfiction due to the threat of libel suits from prominent Oklahoma politicians and business people.

Dr. Debo's documentation of the betrayal and liquidation of the five independent Native American republics of the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles proved to be too ugly a story for many of the land-hungry white men who had perpetrated an orgy of criminal exploitation against the rightful owners.

Color image of the front cover of Angie Debo's book titled, And Still the Waters Run.

1973 book cover

A new novel for you: Cloud County Harvest

8/16/2022

Book Cover of Cloud County Harvest, Book 1 in the Cloud County Series

Heads up!

Here's the front cover of my new novel, Cloud County Harvest, the sequel to Cloud County Persuasion.

It will be published in fall 2022, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it.

What is the story about?

Cloud County Harvest.

It's 1951.

As the insidious advance of a mid-century drought sidles across the Southern Plains, the Hill and Quick families of Cloud County buckle down to the work at hand.  Hard times, extreme drought, and pestilence are not new to them or their neighbors.  Tenacity is the key; the question is, how will it change them and the red earth they inherited?

You read Cloud County Persuasion and you want to go back.  Cloud County Harvest is your ticket.

The plains of Oklahoma are waiting for you.

Savor again the evocative sense of place.  Inhabit the social and cultural milieu of rural and small-town life. Catch up on the resilient men and women you came to know in Cloud County Persuasion and expand your circle of the people who enrich their lives.

Where and what is Oklahoma? Is it semi-arid or subtropical; forested or treeless? Do classic novelists and Hollywood movies get it right?

5/16/2020

Map of the State of Oklahoma, USA, showing boundaries, the location of major cities and populated places, rivers and lakes, interstate highways, principal highways, and railroads.

Map of the State of Oklahoma, USA. Nations Online Project.

Is Oklahoma your home state, too?

I grew up in Oklahoma.  For me, it’s my home even when I’m not able to live there and always wins first place on my map.

Perhaps you rank your home state as Number 1 on your map.  Where do you rank Oklahoma, and why?

Out in the wide-open spaces?

After I left Oklahoma to join the Army and see the world, I met many Americans with few, if any, accurate conceptions about my favorite state. Some people pegged it as Southern, others guessed Midwestern. The closest most non-Okies could get is “it's somewhere out in the wide-open spaces.”

The Dustbowl, tornados, and flat terrain might feature in their mental image along with oil and Indians.  About all they really knew was the wonderful song “Oklahoma!” from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical of the same name.

I like Oklahoma’s wide-open spaces so much that I set my novel, Cloud County Persuasion, in that great state.  My research on the 1940s and 50s reminded me of a few of the reasons why the location and geography of the “Sooner” state is sometimes misconstrued or just dead wrong.

Three Reasons to visit the Philbrook Museum of Art

10/4/2019

I was twelve years old when I first visited the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Italian-Renaissance style mansion (the first mansion I had ever entered) and gardens impressed me then and continue to do so each time I return.

Oil tycoon Waite Phillips (1883-1964) and his wife Genevieve built Villa Philbrook on 25 acres in 1927. In 1938 they donated their Tulsa residence to the Tulsa community to:

create a cultural institution for housing, preserving, and displaying therein works of art, literature, relics and curios, including those representative of the native North American Peoples." --Waite and Genevieve Phillips

The Phillips would be pleased with the hard work that has taken place over generations to establish and enhance that vision.

What are three reasons to visit The Philbrook Museum of Art?

#1. The Art.

American Indian art. This collection is an acclaimed pillar of the museum. During the period 1949-1979, the museum held the competitive "Indian Annual." As a result, the general public became more familiar with Native American art, private and public collectors (including The Philbrook) increased their Native American art collections, and The Philbrook gained a national reputation.
African, American, Asian, and European art. Purchases and donations (especially donations) have shared in the expansion of The Philbrook's permanent collection.
National traveling exhibits. My husband and I visited the museum in September 2019 in order to see Wondrous Worlds: Art & Islam Through Time and Place. Courtesy of The Newark Museum's extensive collection, objects from the Middle East and India were arrayed along with works from Africa and Southeast Asia in order to showcase the diversity and global impact of Islamic art. Since I'm a "word person," I especially liked the handwritten Koran illustrated in still-vivid drawings.

#2. The Gardens.

East Formal Garden, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

East Formal Garden, September 2019.

Photo of Lynne Schall, author

Author

Lynne Schall is the author of three novels: Women's Company - The Minerva Girls (2016), Cloud County Persuasion (2018), and Cloud County Harvest (November 2022). She and her family live in Kansas, USA, where she is writing her fourth novel, Book 3 in the Cloud County trilogy.

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© 2017-2025 Lynne Schall. All Rights Reserved.
Book Cover designs by Anastasia Sobol of Ukraine.

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