By Catherine Whitney
Seventy-five years ago, in April of 1939, John Steinbeck published his fictionalized account of the severe hardships facing Oklahoma’s rural poor. His novel, The Grapes of Wrath, told a story of “exodusters” forced from their homes by economic and environmental aftershocks of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl.
Inspired by Steinbeck’s tale, s…
By Brian Ted Jones
Texas Governor Rick Perry’s recent indictment by a grand jury in Travis County, Texas, might seem familiar to the people of Oklahoma County, if they’ve been following the case of Albert Gustava Gerhart, founding member of the Sooner Tea Party.
These cases call into question the definitions of blackmail and coercion—and whether those words ought to…
By This Land
Ellison was not known for giving interviews, but in 1966 he sat down at his home in New York City with Robert Hughes. The video of their conversation shows Ellison dressed in a sweater vest and dark-framed glasses. He’s in his element—an office decorated with stacks of books and Buddhist statues. When answering questions about American society, Elliso…
10/13/2014 | Poetry
By Ken Hada
For Uncle Max
Greed, I guess—my father answered
me uncharacteristically critical
of our ancestors, their impulsive
move to New Mexico Territory
stopping somewhere around Clayton
where nothing worked out. When
the horses died from grazing locoweed
they loaded their sparse selves in a wagon
and bleakly headed back to northwest
Oklahoma—the grass…
By This Land
When GM decommissioned the Parade of Progress, 12 Futurliners went up for sale. We know that a couple of them found their way to the Michigan State Police and were used as traveling exhibits for fairground displays. We also found out that at least one Futurliner found its way into the hands of the Oral Roberts and was utilized in his popular evangelical crusade…
By Kiera Feldman
The fall of the first family of televangelism came swiftly.
Two Oral Roberts Ministries employees crouched on a desk on their hands and knees, their heads sticking through a hole in the wall. The voices of the Oral Roberts University Board of Regents on the speakerphone conference call one floor below carried up through the thin ceiling panels. Patriarch…
09/30/2014 | Poetry
By Randy Roberts Potts
1. Richard Roberts, ca. 1954
He used to hold her down (my mother used
to say) and lick. His long, pink tongue would dart
from chin to forehead as snail trails cruised
along her face, her eyes part-way closed, part-
way opened. His face, suspended art-
fully like the moon, watching, waiting, hoping
that she would cry, but not too loud. Tears smart-
ing, fury gathe…
By Brooks Nickell
Sam Gillaspy has lived in Arcadia, Oklahoma, for 88 years. He’s devoted the last eight of those to giving tours at the Round Barn of Arcadia on historic Route 66. To folks who visit the antique attraction, Gillaspy is known simply as Mr. Sam. Tourists and locals alike have made it a mission to stop in an hear Mr. Sam recount the time the round barn collapsed…
By Larry Guthrie
North of the Red River, in the “Land of the Red Man,” on the iron-rich red soil and matching dust, with red Russian wheat waving, and rose rocks abounding, and red-tailed hawks circling, and redbuds blooming, the red “46” state flag was flying over the 1914 State Capitol, and inside were six Socialist Party legislators.[1]
Our Populist foundin…
09/22/2014 | Poetry
By T. Allen Culpepper
It’s one of those buildings
that everyone has seen
and many have noted,
but hardly anyone can locate.
Even those who pass it daily
on the local streets
hesitate when asked precisely
which one it’s on, exactly
what it’s called.
From the highway, only the
cupola and spire are visible
for fleeting seconds,
an enigmatic vision, an apparition,
like J…
By Brooks Nickell
How long does it take to dance from Italy to Oklahoma? For Marcello Angelini, almost 35 years.
He began studying ballet as a child in Naples, Italy, before graduating from the Kiev Institute of Dance in the former Soviet Union. He wound up in Tulsa after a bout of tendonitis pulled him off the stage for weeks. Sidelined and restless, Marcello applied for the pos…
By Adrian Margaret Brune
In a small meeting room in a Unitarian Universalist church a few miles north of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, people of different races and age groups gathered in late 2001 to pore over the large and comprehensive “Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot.” Between bites of doughnuts and sips of coffee, they strategized a way to comme…
By Aimee Parkison
She couldn’t resist the photographs online, or the sellers’ description:
Adorable Cape Cod with walk-out basement! Main floor has master suite, spare bedroom (or office), kitchen, dining and living room. Upstairs kids’ bedrooms with built-in desks, a window seat with cedar storage, bathroom and three attic storage areas. Basement has a huge s…
By Jezy J. Gray
The rock formations that spill out from the wooded foothills of the Sans Bois Mountains in southeastern Oklahoma were once a draw for outlaws and outcasts. Legend has it that these rocky cliffs and canyons served as a refuge for a number of personae non gratae, from Civil War deserters to infamous outlaws like Jesse James, Belle Starr, and the Dalton Gang…
By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
During the final phase of military conquest of the continent, surviving Indigenous refugees were deposited in Indian Territory, piled on top of each other in smaller and smaller reservations.
In 1883, the first of several conferences were held in Mohonk, New York, of a group of influential and wealthy advocates of the “manifest destiny” policy. Th…
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