Okemah, Oklahoma, where Woody Guthrie once lived and wrote songs, was fighting for its existence in the late 1920s and early 1930s as the oil boom ended, cotton fell to ten cents a pound, and Prohibition was in force. Yet this grim scenario frames Robert Rutland's colorful remembrance of a youth filled with adventure, characters, curiosity, and ......
One of Oklahoma's most famous native sons, Fred Harris faced life's challenges with the same resolve as a favorite uncle: "Does people do it? If people does it, I can do it." In this engaging memoir, he describes how he met those challenges head-on. A child of the Great Depression, Harris grew up in the small town of Walters, Oklahoma, where he ......
Guided by a penchant for self-reflection and thoughtful discussion, Presbyterians have long been pulled in conflicting directions in their perceptions of their shared religious mission-with a tension that sometimes divides hearts as well as congregations. In this first comprehensive history of the Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma, historians ......
In 1917 it was still possible for the University of Oklahoma's annual Catalogue to include a roster of every student's name and hometown. A compact and close-knit community, those 2,500 students and their 130 professors studied and taught at a respectable (though small, relatively uncomplicated, and rather insular) regional university. During the ......
During the decades between the Civil War and the establishment of Oklahoma statehood, Choctaws suffered almost daily from murders, thefts, and assaults-usually at the hands of white intruders, but increasingly by Choctaws themselves. This book focuses on two previously unexplored murder cases to illustrate the intense factionalism that emerged ......
Finely decorated ceramic vessels made for cooking, storage, and serving were a hallmark of Native Caddo cultures. The tradition began as many as 3,000 years ago among Woodland-period ancestors, thrived between c. 800 and 1800, and continues today in the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma. In Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Traditions, eighteen experts offer a ......
The American cowboy is a mythical character who refuses to die, says author John R. Erickson. On the one hand he is a common man: a laborer, a hired hand who works for wages. Yet in his lonely struggle against nature and animal cunning, he becomes larger than life. Who is this cowboy? Where did he come from and where is he today? Erickson ......
A Travel Guide to Remarkable Cemeteries in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico,Louisiana, Arkansas
The compilation reaffirms our fascination with cemeteries and their status as tourist attractions. People visit cemeteries in large numbers. Evidence of crowd control abounds from signs directing traffic to the grave marker of President Clinton's mother in Hope, Arkansas, and the large steel cage protecting the tombstone of Billy the Kid at Fort ......