Oklahoman | |
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Regions with significant populations | |
United States, especially Oklahoma and California (primarily of ancestral descent) | |
Languages | |
English (including Oklahoman English), Native American languages | |
Religion | |
Predominantly Southern Baptist, [1] with Methodist, Lutheran minorities | |
Related ethnic groups | |
White Southerners, Native Oklahomans, Appalachians [2] |
An Okie is a person identified with the state of Oklahoma, or their descendants. This connection may be residential, historical or cultural. For most Okies, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Oklahoman. While not an official demographic used or recognized by the United States Census Bureau, Okies, due to various factors, have developed their own distinct culture within larger social groupings both akin to and separate from Midwestern and Southern influences. Included are their own dialect, music, and Indigenous-derived folklore.
In California, the term came to refer to very poor migrants from Oklahoma coming to look for employment. The Dust Bowl and the "Okie" migration of the 1930s brought in over a million migrants, many headed to the farm labor jobs in the Central Valley. A study in the 1990s indicated that about 3.75 million Californians were descendants of this population. [3] By 1950, four million individuals, or one quarter of all persons born in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri, lived outside the region, primarily in the West. [4]
Prominent Okies included singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie and country musician Merle Haggard. John Steinbeck wrote about Okies moving west in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath , which was filmed in 1940 by John Ford.
In the mid-1930s, during the Dust Bowl era, large numbers of farmers fleeing ecological disaster and the Great Depression migrated from the Great Plains and Southwest regions to California mostly along historic U.S. Route 66. Californians began calling all migrants by that name, even though many newcomers were not actually Oklahomans. The migrants included people from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico, but were all referred to as "Okies" and "Arkies". [5] More of the migrants were from Oklahoma than any other state, and a total of 15% of the Oklahoma population left for California.[ citation needed ]
Ben Reddick, a free-lance journalist and later publisher of the Paso Robles Daily Press, is credited with first using the term Oakie, in the mid-1930s, to identify migrant farm workers. He noticed the "OK" abbreviation (for Oklahoma) on many of the migrants' license plates and referred to them in his article as "Oakies". The first known usage was an unpublished private postcard from 1907. [6]
Once the Okie families migrated from Oklahoma to California, they often were forced to work on large farms to support their families. Because of the minimal pay, these families were often forced to live on the outskirts of these farms in shanty houses they built themselves. These homes were normally set up in groups called Squatter Camps or Shanty Towns, which were often located near the irrigation ditches which ran along the outskirts of these farms. Indoor plumbing was inaccessible to these migrant workers, and so they were forced to resort to using outhouses. Unfortunately, because of the minimal space allotted to the migrant workers, their outhouses were normally located near the irrigation ditches, and some waste would inevitably runoff into the water. These irrigation ditches provided the Okie families with a water supply. [7]
Due to this lack of sanitation in these camps, disease ran rampant among the migrant workers and their families. Also contributing to disease was the fact that these Shanty Town homes that the Okie migrant workers lived in had no running water, and because of their minimal pay medical attention was out of the question. However, what native Californians failed to realize at the time was that these Okie migrant farm workers did not always live in the conditions that the Dust Bowl left them in. In fact, often these families had once owned their own farms and had been able to support themselves. This meant that Okie families often had been in a fairly comfortable situation before the circumstances surrounding the Dust Bowl induced their migration. [8]
Historian James Gregory has explored the long-term impact of the Okies on California society. He notes that in The Grapes of Wrath, novelist John Steinbeck envisioned the migrants becoming active unionists and New Deal agitators demanding higher wages and better housing conditions. Steinbeck did not foresee that most Okies would move into well-paid jobs in war industries in the 1940s. When a man named Oliver Carson visited Kern County in the 1930s, he became fascinated with the Okie culture and lifestyle. He travelled back in 1952 to see what the Okies had made of themselves and saw that the difference was astounding. They were not living in roadside encampments anymore or driving run-down cars- they had better living situations and better views on life. [9]
When World War II began, large amounts of money went flooding to California to aid the USA in the war. This was highly helpful for the Okies, as jobs of higher quality opened up in larger numbers and they were able to make their lives better over time. Other Okies saw this and decided they wanted to go to California to make even more money. An oil worker wanted to make enough money to go back to Oklahoma and buy a farm, another family wanted to rent out their farm while they were away to potentially double their earnings. These families that came during the 1940s lived in California's biggest cities, Los Angeles, San Diego and various cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other families who moved to California before had usually moved to the valleys and rural areas. [9]
While many families had plans to leave California after making a good amount of money, they often didn't; the children and grandchildren of Okies also seldom returned to Oklahoma or farming, and are now concentrated in California's cities and suburbs. Long-term cultural impacts include a commitment to evangelical Protestantism, a love of country music, political conservatism, and strong support for traditional moral and cultural values. [10] [11]
It has been said that some Oklahomans who stayed and lived through the Dust Bowl see the Okie migrants as quitters who fled Oklahoma. Other Oklahoma natives are as proud of their Okies who made good in California as are the Okies themselves – and of the Arkies, West Texans, and others who were cast in with them. [12]
In the later half of the 20th century, there became increasing evidence that any pejorative meaning of the term Okie was fading; former and present Okies began to apply the label as a badge of honor and symbol of the Okie survivor attitude. [13]
In one example, Republican Oklahoma Governor Dewey F. Bartlett launched a campaign in the 1960s to popularize Okie as a positive term for Oklahomans; [14] however, the Democrats used the campaign, and the fact that Bartlett was born in Ohio, as a political tool against him, [15] and further degraded the term for some time.
In 1968, Governor Bartlett made Reddick, the originator of the California usage, an honorary Okie. And in the early 1970s, Merle Haggard's country song "Okie from Muskogee" was a hit on national airwaves. During the 1970s, the term Okie became familiar to most Californians as a prototype of a subcultural group.
In the early 1990s the California Department of Transportation refused to allow the name of the "Okie Girl" restaurant to appear on a roadside sign on Interstate 5, arguing that the restaurant's name insulted Oklahomans; only after protracted controversy and a letter from the Governor of Oklahoma did the agency relent. [16] Since then, the children and grandchildren of Okies in California changed the meaning of Okie to a self-title of pride in obtaining success, as well to challenge what they felt was snobbery or "the last group to make fun of" in the state's urban area cultures.
Muskogee Mayor John Tyler Hammons used the phrase "I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee" as the successful theme of his 2008 mayoral campaign. He was 19 years old at the time. 2020 U.S. Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren, [17] who was born in Oklahoma, frequently referenced her "Okie" roots during campaign events. [18]
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John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."
The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.
The Dust Bowl was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region. The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years.
Weedpatch is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Kern County, California, United States. Weedpatch is 10 miles (16 km) south-southeast of Bakersfield. It is considered to be one of the poorest areas in Kern County. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 2,658.
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937).
A pea-picker is a derogatory reference to poor, migrant workers during the Great Depression. These people were unskilled, poorly educated workers, employable only in menial jobs, such as harvesting crops and, as such, received poor wages for working long hours under dreadful conditions. Some of these people were photographed by Dorothea Lange.
The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a New Deal U.S. federal agency created May 1, 1935. It relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. On September 1, 1937, it was succeeded by the Farm Security Administration.
The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 American drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F. Zanuck.
Dust Bowl Ballads is an album by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. It was released by Victor Records, in 1940. All the songs on the album deal with the Dust Bowl and its effects on the country and its people. It is considered to be one of the first concept albums. It was Guthrie's first commercial recording and the most successful album of his career.
The Bakersfield sound is a sub-genre of country music developed in the mid-to-late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield is defined by its influences of rock and roll and honky-tonk style country, and its heavy use of electric instrumentation and backbeats. It was also a reaction against the slickly produced, orchestra-laden Nashville sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s. The Bakersfield sound became one of the most popular and influential country genres of the 1960s, initiating a revival of honky-tonk music and influencing later country rock and outlaw country musicians, as well as progressive country.
The Grapes of Wrath is an opera in three acts composed by Ricky Ian Gordon to a libretto by Michael Korie based on John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel of the same title. It premiered on February 10, 2007 at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in Saint Paul, Minnesota in a production by Minnesota Opera. The work has been revised in subsequent years and has also been performed as a two-act concert version.
Ruth Comfort Mitchell Young was an American writer and playwright, best known for her novel, Of Human Kindness. She wrote under her maiden name Ruth Comfort Mitchell, as well as her married name, Mrs. Sanborn Young. She was the wife of California State Senator Sanborn Young.
"Do Re Mi" is a folk song by American songwriter Woody Guthrie. The song deals with the experiences and reception of Dust Bowl migrants when they arrive in California. It is known for having two guitar parts, both recorded by Guthrie.
Sanora Babb was an American novelist, poet, and literary editor.
Paul "Okie Paul" Westmoreland was a musician, songwriter, and disc jockey in Sacramento, California.
Arvin Federal Government Camp, also known as the Weedpatch Camp or Sunset Labor Camp, was built by the Farm Security Administration south of Bakersfield, California, in 1936 to house migrant workers during the Great Depression. The National Register of Historic Places placed several of its historic buildings on the registry on January 22, 1996.
The California Dream is the psychological motivation to gain fast wealth or fame in a new land. Some argue that, as a result of the California Gold Rush after 1849, California's name became indelibly connected with the Gold Rush, and fast success in a new world became known as the "California Dream", while others claim this concept did not emerge until the 1960s. California was perceived as a place of new beginnings, where great wealth could reward hard work and good luck. The notion inspired the idea of an American Dream. California was seen as a lucky place, a land of opportunity and good fortune. It was a powerful belief, underlying many of the accomplishments of the state, and equally potent when threatened.
The Harvest Gypsies, by John Steinbeck, is a series of feature-story articles written on commission for The San Francisco News about the lives and times of migrant workers in California's Central Valley. Published daily from October 5 to 12, 1936, Steinbeck explores and explains the hardships and triumphs of American migrant workers during the Great Depression, tracing their paths and the stories of their lives and travels from one crop harvest to the next crop harvest as they eked out a stark existence as temporary farmhands.
"Vigilante Man" is a song by Woody Guthrie, recorded and released in 1940 as one of his Dust Bowl Ballads.
Whose Names Are Unknown is an American novel by Sanora Babb, written in the 1930s but not published until 2004. It centers on members of a High Plains farm family during the Great Depression as they endure the poverty inflicted by drought and the Dust Bowl; they ultimately flee to California in hopes of building a better life but encounter a new set of hardships.
Notes
The migrants included people from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico, but were all referred to as "Okies" and "Arkies."
Further reading