Okie

Last updated
Okie
Oklahoman
Lange-MigrantMother02.jpg
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.

Contents

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.

Great Depression usage

An 18-year-old Okie mother, pictured holding her child, stranded penniless in the Imperial Valley, 1937 Young Oklahoma mother, age 18, penniless, stranded in Imperial Valley, Callifornia - NARA - 195849.tif
An 18-year-old Okie mother, pictured holding her child, stranded penniless in the Imperial Valley, 1937
Rear view of an Okie's car, passing through Amarillo, heading west, 1941 Okie car rear view 1941.jpg
Rear view of an Okie's car, passing through Amarillo, heading west, 1941

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]

Living conditions in California during the Great Depression

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]

Post-Great Depression usage

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]

Novels

Music

Poetry

Film

Other fiction

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

Notes

  1. "U.S. Religious Landscapes Survey". The Pew Forum on Religion and Life. Retrieved April 22, 2008.
  2. Campbell, Rex R. Campbell, Mary. Hughes, Colleen. "A Revolution in the Heartland: Changes in Rural Culture, Family and Communities, 1900–2000" Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine . University of Missouri: Department of Rural Sociology. Columbia, Missouri. 2004.
  3. "Okies--They Sank Roots and Changed the Heart of California : History: Unwanted and shunned, the 1930s refugees from the Dust Bowl endured, spawning new generations. Their legacy can be found in towns scattered throughout the San Joaquin Valley". Los Angeles Times . 18 October 1992.
  4. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, "One or Two Things I Know about Us: Rethinking the Image and Role of the 'Okies'," Canadian Papers in Rural History 1998 10: 15–43
  5. Pryor, Alton (October 27, 2012). Little Known Tales in Oklahoma History. Stagecoach Publishing. p. 55. 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."
  6. Stewart, Roy P. "Postal Card Proves Sooners Were 'Okies' Way Back In 1907," Thomes Mrs. Agnes Hooks of Thomas with a postal card mailed at Newcastle, Ind. in 1907, address to a Miss Agness Kirkbridge, with the salutation: "Hello Okie – Will see you next Monday night." Signed: Myrtle M. Pence. Mrs. Hooks says Agness Kirkbridge was an aunt of hers. The Kirkbridge family came to Oklahoma Territory in 1904 and settled south of Custer City.
  7. DeAngelis, Gina (2003). "Baked Out and Broke: The Okie Migration". Cobblestone. 24 (4).
  8. Curtis, James (1986). "Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great Depression". Winterthur Portfolio. 1 (21): 1–20. doi:10.1086/496257. S2CID   162347932.
  9. 1 2 Gregory, James (1989). American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. Oxford University Press. pp. 174–175.
  10. James N. Gregory, "Dust Bowl Legacies: The Okie Impact on California, 1939–1989," California History (1989) 68#3 pp 74–85.
  11. James N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (1998)
  12. Haslam, The Other California, p. 107: "Says Jim Young, chancellor of Bakersfield College, 'I'm proud of my folks and everyone else who came out here and were called Okies, and who made new lives for themselves.' Young, of course, symbolizes well why others in the Central Valley are so proud to claim that term Okie.
  13. "State to Print 'Okie Dough'," The Daily Oklahoman, Thursday, 27 October 1955, p. 20, col. 3: "A new type of money, designed to boost Oklahomans' pride in the Sooner state, soon will be off the press as part of the Greater Oklahoma City Forward committee's program. Known as "Okie Dough," the script will also be useful in braging [sic] in the other 47 states."
  14. Editorial, "Speaking of Okies," The Daily Oklahoman, June 6, 1970, p. 8, col. 1: "Bartlett did not invent the term. He simple recognized its existence in the vocabulary – and gambled that nothing was more likely to erase its stigma than letting outsiders know Sooners themselves rather liked being called Okies."
  15. "Democrat Gets In Plug for Donkey," The Daily Oklahoman, Friday, June 2, 1970, p. 3. col. 1: "In a release last week, Kennedy [State Democratic Chairman J.C. Kennedy] charged, the pins were campaign buttons for Gov. Bartlett. He demanded Monday that state employees be instructed to view all Okie-type paraphernalia as political material and that it be treated in accordance with state rules and regulations governing such matters."
  16. David Colker, "Los Angeles County News in Brief: Quake Delivers Knockout Punch to Okie Girl Eatery," Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1994, Part B, p. 2.
  17. Library, C. N. N. (9 January 2015). "Elizabeth Warren Fast Facts". CNN. Retrieved 2019-11-15.
  18. "Warren's rivals have tried for years to brand her as an elitist". POLITICO. 7 November 2019. Retrieved 2019-11-15.
  19. Igler, The Human Tradition in California, p. 144: "Charles Schindo, in Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination (1997), contended that Steinbeck and his fellow 1930s liberals were elitists who misinterpreted the Okie experience and then imposed that leftist misinterpretation on the American consciousness."
  20. "Old Angel".
  21. •–•Okanagan Okie•–• Archived February 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  22. "Quotes". IMDb.

Further reading