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Okie is an appellation, dating from at least 1905, denoting a resident or native of Oklahoma. It is derived from the name of the state, similar to Texan or Tex for someone from Texas, or Arkie or Arkansawyer for a native of Arkansas. Okie, for a time, was used pejoratively, mainly by Californians and politically motivated writers, to describe white and mixed Indian blood migrant farm workers and their families forced to flee their farms during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Californians used the term for residents from many states, not just those from Oklahoma.

Great Depression usage

In the 1930s, during the Dust Bowl era, large numbers of farmers, fleeing ecological disaster, migrated from the Great Plains and Southwest regions to California along Route 66. More of the migrants were from Oklahoma than any other state, and some 15% of the Oklahoma population left for California.

Ben Reddick, a free-lance journalist and later editor of the Paso Robles Daily Press, is credited with first using the term Okie, in the mid-1930s, to identify migrant farm workers. He noticed the OK (for Oklahoma) on many of the migrant’s license plates and referred to them in his article as "OKies". Californians began calling all migrants "Okies", regardless of whether or not they were actually from Oklahoma. The term was made famous nationwide by John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath.

In 1937, California passed the so-called "Anti-Okie Law" (Section 2615 St. 1937, p. 1406) which stated, "Every person, firm or corporation, or officer or agent thereof that brings or assists in bringing into the State any indigent person who is not a resident of the State, knowing him to be an indigent person, is guilty of a misdemeanor". The statute was eventually overturned in 1941 by Edwards v. California (314 U.S. 160). Edwards had brought his brother-in-law from Texas to California and was convicted and sent to prison for 6 months.

Will Rogers, himself a rich Okie immigrant to California, once remarked jokingly that the Okies arriving in California increased the intelligence of both states.

Bigoted Californians still use the term in a derogatory manner for any conservative working-class white individual; attempting to slur them with connotations of homelessness, poverty, and hickishness.

In 1968, Oklahoma Governor Dewey Bartlett made Reddick, the originator of the California usage, an honorary Okie.

Modern usage

In the later half of the twentieth century, the term "Okie" took on a new meaning for Oklahomans, with both former and present "Okies" wearing the label as a badge of honor and symbol of the Okie survivor attitude. Republican Governor Dewey Bartlett launched a campaign in the 1960s to popularize Okie as a term for Oklahomans; however, the Democrats used the campaign, and the fact that Bartlett was born in Ohio, as a political tool against him, and further degraded the term for a time.

It has been said that some Oklahomans who stayed and lived through the Dust Bowl see the Okie migrants as being quitters who fled Oklahoma; but there is hardly a native Oklahoman who does not have kith or kin who made the trip. Most Oklahoma natives are as extraordinarily proud of their Okies who made good in California as are the Okies themselves—proud even of the Arkies, West Texans, and others who got painted with the same brush.

Oklahomans usually use Okie without prejudice but it is often used jocularly too, similar to Hoosier by Hoosiers or redneck by rednecks, who also do not consider terms for themselves particularly denigrating.

At the same time, the meaning of the term in California changed as well, and rather than having anything to do with Oklahoma, "Okie" is a generalized term which can be equated with white trash. For instance, ideas, practices and objects considered kitschy or associated with trailer park culture might be characterized as Okie. One might hear phrases such as "only Okies live like that" or "that Okie *" used in some areas.

However, the word as a whole is often considered antiquated in the 21st century.

Usage in fiction

Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, has often been criticized for its false portrayal of Okies in his attempt to advance his leftist political agenda. Among his many errors, Okies were portrayed as fleeing the Dust Bowl from Sallisaw, Oklahoma. In fact, the Dust Bowl was in Western Oklahoma and most of the Okies leaving Oklahoma in the "Dirty Thirties" were leaving because of the Great Depression. Detractors also point to his portrayal of Okies leaving because of bankers foreclosing on their farms of many generations. Many, if not most, of the migrants were tenant farmers and were constantly moving from farm to farm for their entire lives. Those who owned their own farms and left looking for work only sold them if they decided to stay where the jobs were. The novel was also banned by many libraries for its prurient portrayal of Rose of Sharon suckling a starving man. The more cynical observers opined that the scene was included just for the purpose of making his book controversial.

In the Cities In Flight series of science fiction novels by James Blish, the term "Okie" was applied in a similar context to entire cities that, thanks to an anti-gravity device, took flight to the stars in order to escape the Earth's economic collapse. Working as a migrant labour force, these cities came to act as cultural pollinators, spreading technology and knowledge throughout the expanding human civilization. The later novels focus on the travels of New York, N.Y. as one such Okie city, though there are hundreds more.

Also in On the Road, the road-novel written by Jack Kerouac between 1948 and 1949 (although it was not published until 1957), the term appears to refer to some of the people the main character finds while working on the cotton plantations of the south during his trips around the States.

Okie music

  • California Okie - Buck Owens (1976).
  • Dear Okie - Doye O’Dell/Rudy Sooter (1948)—"Dear Okie, if you see Arkie, tell ’im Tex’s got a job for him out in Californy."
  • Lonesome Okie Goin’ Home - Merl Lindsay and the Oklahoma Nite Riders (1947).
  • Oakie Boogie - Jack Guthrie and His Oklahomans (1947)—considered by many to be the first Rock & Roll song.
  • Okie - J.J. Cale (1974).
  • Okie From Muskogee - Merle Haggard (1969)—58th on the Top 500 Country Music Songs list.
  • Okie Skies - The Bays Brothers (2004).
  • Okies in California - Doye O'Odell (1949).
  • Ramblin' Okie - Terry Fell.
  • She's An Okie - Al Vaughn.
  • The Streets of Bakersfield - Dwight Yoakam (1988)

Okie poetry

  • Cahill, Charlie. Point Blank Poetry: Okie Country Cowboy Poems. Midwest City, OK: CF Cahill, 1991. LoC Control Number: 92179243
  • Harrison, Pamela. Okie Chronicles. Cincinnati: David Robert Books, 2005. ISBN 1932339876

Okie fiction

  • Charles, Henry P. That dumbest Okie, and other short stories: Oklahoma! "The land of honest men and slender women." Wetzel, c1952.
  • Cuelho, Artie, Jr. At the Rainbow's End: A Dustbowl Collection of Prose and Poetry of the Okie Migration to the San Joaquin Valley. Big Timber, Montana: Seven Buffaloes Press, 1982. ISBN 0916380254
  • Haslam, Gerald. Okies: Selected Stories. Santa Barbara, California: Peregrine Smith, Inc, 1975. ISBN 087905042X

Fiction about Okies

  • Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939.

Trivia

  • Call OKIE is a non-profit organization created to oversee underground utilities and excavations in the state of Oklahoma. It was created in response to the Oklahoma Underground Facilities Damage Prevention Act enacted in 1981. *
  • Okie was the name of two P-47 fighter/bombers piloted by Maj. Quince L. Brown of the 84th Fighter Squadron, 78th Fighter Group, during World War II. Brown was one of the 8th Army Air Force's first aces and credited with 14.333 victories. His first P-47D was noted for its distinctive artwork. He was killed during his second combat tour. Brown's hometown was Bristow, Oklahoma, and he was inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame in 1994. [http://www.78thfightergroup.com/history/qlbrown2.html
  • Okie Derby is the world's largest proficiency air rally. It is sponsored annually by the Oklahoma Chapter of the Ninety-Nines (International Organization of Women Pilots). *
  • An OKIE pin, a promotional souvenir developed by Governor Dewey Bartlett, (and an Oklahoma flag) was placed in the Apollo 10 lunar module Snoopy by Commander Thomas P. Stafford before it was sent into orbit around the sun.


Additional reading

  • Gregory, James N. American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0195044231
  • Lange, Dorthea; Paul S. Taylor. An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion. 1939.
  • Morgan, Dan. Rising in the West: The True Story of an "Okie" Family from the Great Depression through the Regan Years. New York: Knopf, 1992. ISBN 0394574532
  • Ortiz, Roxanne Dunbar. Red Dirt: Growing up Okie. New York: Verso, 1997. ISBN 1859848567
  • Sonneman, Toby F. Fruit Fields in My Blood: Okie Migrants in the West. Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press, 1992. ISBN 0893011525

External links

See also

Demographic history of the United States | Oklahoma | Pejorative terms for people

Okie

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Okie".

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