It's better now, but don't tell me Oklahoma has never been a racist state
In a recent Facebook post eulogizing Pope Francis, I happened to mention that I was born in a small town in a racist state. The point of the article was not racism, it was praising a great pope. But the story began with my first interaction with pastoral Catholicism by virtue of a monastery fortuitously located in the small 'Baptist' town of my birth. I was not prepared for the attacks I received on characterizing my (unnamed) home state of the '50s as racist. Most of my readers do know I am from Oklahoma, and this is not a controversial characterization, as far as anyone who knows anything about Oklahoma history is concerned. But, among other things, I was informed that Oklahoma was 'not now' and 'never had been' racist, and I was 'stirring the pot' to say so.
Well, I hadn't addressed 'now,' but the past from before statehood to my birth in 1953 is as about as clear as human vision allows. Oklahoma's founding politics was Southern, and it inherited all the downsides of that politics, including racism. Oklahoma's constitutional framers did not include Jim Crow laws — laws mandating segregation especially in transportation and schools — in their founding constitution because President Theodore Roosevelt, a progressive Republican, let it be known he would not allow the constitution to go forward with racism enshrined in it. After it was finally approved and became law, the Oklahoma Legislature passed Jim Crow as Senate Bill 1. Interracial marriages and miscegenation were banned and made felonies. Over time hospitals, schools, cemeteries, restaurants were segregated, and Oklahoma made national news by being the first state in the nation to segregate public phone booths.
That's not all. In the early years, lynching took the lives of dozens of Black people. The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 was perhaps the worst incident of racial violence in American history, destroying 35 blocks of homes of Black residents and causing at least 36 to possibly 300 fatalities — the numbers cannot be verified to this day.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark decision ruling public school segregation unconstitutional, was issued in 1954, a year after my birth. The court ordered states to desegregate with 'all deliberate speed,' but of course it took several years. It would have taken longer but for the courage of a Bible-believing Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher named Raymond Gary, who happened to be governor of Oklahoma. Gary not only removed the segregated restrooms in the Capitol, but took special leadership to integrate our schools and raise funds to support necessary new education expenditures. I went to grade school in segregated schools, but by high school, Gary's efforts had integrated my school.
Incidentally, the great lawyer Thurgood Marshall, who had successfully argued the Brown v. Board case, made several trips litigating in Oklahoma. In the 1940s when he came to Norman, a 'sundown' town, to argue the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher case (seeking to obtain a Black student's admission into OU's law school) before the state court, no restaurant in Norman would serve him lunch. He snacked on peanuts from a machine. ( A couple of progressive churches found out about this and opened their kitchens to him and his team throughout the rest of the trial.)
More: I'm a former high school teacher. We need DEI, but discourse must center on civility | Opinion
Numerous other incidents show the sadness of these times. The record-setting Black football player Prentice Gautt (who was named the MVP in the 1959 Orange Bowl, also an Academic All-American and later earned a Ph.D.) was allowed on the field to score but was not allowed to lodge in the hotels with his traveling Sooner football colleagues.
Rep. Hannah Atkins, the first Black woman elected to the state Legislature, moved into Oklahoma the year of my birth. With a couple of degrees and a medical doctor husband, she was welcomed in her community, and into the Episcopal Church. But when she and Dr. Atkins went to church, the only Oklahoma City restaurant that would serve them Sunday lunch was the Howard Johnson's on the interstate — which was required by federal law to serve Black people.
We have made great progress in Oklahoma, largely led by Black people themselves: Clara Luper, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, Roscoe Dungee, Hannah Atkins, the Rev. Ben Hill, and many others. President Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president and orator, warned in his fabled second inaugural address that the costs of racism might rage 'until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword….' Those days are hopefully behind us; so much glorious progress has been made. Yet as recent as two years ago, we saw news reports that a southeast Oklahoma county sheriff and other officials were caught on tape bemoaning the inability to lynch Black people and kill journalists. I'm hoping that Pope Francis, in a new venue, will pray for us — and I suspect he will.
Robert H. Henry has served as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives and was elected attorney general of Oklahoma in 1986 and 1990. Later, he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, where he served as chief judge until 2009. He became the 17th president of Oklahoma City University in July 2010, retiring from that post in 2018.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: I've been criticized for speaking the truth about OK racism | Opinion
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The Great Un-Awokening
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Hamilton Spectator
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