Okie - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Okie is a term dating from as early as 1907, originally denoting a resident or native of Oklahoma

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

. It is derived from the name of the state, similar to Texan or Tex for someone from Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, or Arkie or Arkansawyer for a native of Arkansas

Arkansas

Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...

.

In the 1930s on the West Coast

West Coast of the United States

West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...

, especially California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, the term (often used in contempt) came to refer to a migrant who left the South

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

, Midwest, and sometimes, Southeast

Southeastern United States

The Southeastern United States, colloquially referred to as the Southeast, is the eastern portion of the Southern United States. It is one of the most populous regions in the United States of America....

United States to settle in large numbers to restart their lives in the region's thriving agriculture and manufacturing industries. Most worked on farms, and in the shipyards and defense factories leading up to and following World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936...

as well as a federal program which took farm land out of production caused many to lose or leave their homes.

Rural white and American Indian

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

farmers of Oklahoma, and from the Southern and Central states had been relocating to the Northeast and west coast since the 1850s, but the "Okie" migration of the 1930s brought in over a million new displaced residents to California's Central valley and major cities bucked the trend.

Dunbar-Ortiz

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is an American academic, educator, feminist activist, and writer.Born in San Antonio, Texas, Dunbar-Ortiz is of partial American Indian background. She spent most of her youth growing up in the rural community of Piedmont, Oklahoma...

(1996) argues that 'Okie' denotes much more than being from Oklahoma. 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. The core group of Okies are descendants of Scotch Irish who display a marked individualistic political bent. During 1906-17 many became Socialists or joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and Okies tended toward left-populism in the 1930s. Prominent Okies in the 1930s included Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...

. Most prominent in the late 1960s and 1970s were country musician Merle Haggard

Merle Haggard

Merle Ronald Haggard is an American country music singer, guitarist, fiddler, instrumentalist, and songwriter. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band The Strangers helped create the Bakersfield sound, which is characterized by the unique twang of Fender Telecaster guitars, vocal harmonies,...

and writer Gerald Haslam

Gerald Haslam

Gerald William Haslam is the author credited with having created an awareness of "the other California" , the state's untrendy small town and rural reaches...

Great Depression usage

In the 1930s to the mid-thirties, during the Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936...

era, large numbers of farmer

Farmer

A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...

s fleeing ecological disaster and the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

migrated from the Great Plains

Great Plains

The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...

and Southwest regions to California mostly along historic U.S. Route 66

U.S. Route 66

U.S. Route 66 was a highway within the U.S. Highway System. One of the original U.S. highways, Route 66 was established on November 11, 1926 -- with road signs erected the following year...

. More of the migrants were from Oklahoma than any other state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

, and a total of approximately 15% of the Oklahoma population left for California.

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." Californians began calling all migrants by that name, even though many newcomers were not actually Oklahomans.

Many West Coast residents and some politically motivated writers used "Okie" to disparage these poor, white (including those of mixed American Indian

Native Americans in the United States

ancestry, the largest tribal group being Cherokee

Cherokee

The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...

s), migrant worker

Migrant worker

The term migrant worker has different official meanings and connotations in different parts of the world. The United Nations' definition is broad, including any people working outside of their home country...

s and their families. The term became well-known nationwide by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

's novel The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....

.

Will Rogers

Will Rogers

William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....

, a famous movie star with Oklahoma roots remarked jokingly

Will Rogers phenomenon

The Will Rogers phenomenon is obtained when moving an element from one set to another set raises the average values of both sets. It is based on the following quote, attributed to comedian Will Rogers:...

that the Okies moving from Oklahoma to California increased the average intelligence of both states.

Modern usage

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 some family member who made the trip down Route 66. Most 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.

In the later half of the 20th century, there became increasing evidence that any pejorative meaning of the term Okie was changing; former and present Okies began to apply the label as a badge of honor and symbol of the Okie survivor attitude.

In one example, Republican

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

Oklahoma Governor

Governor of Oklahoma

The governor of the state of Oklahoma is the head of state for the state of Oklahoma, United States. Under the Oklahoma Constitution, the governor is also the head of government, serving as the chief executive of the Oklahoma executive branch, of the government of Oklahoma...

Dewey F. Bartlett

Dewey Follett Bartlett, Sr. , a U.S. politician, served as the 19th Governor of Oklahoma from 1967 to 1971, following his same-party Republican predecessor, Henry Bellmon. State law at that time did not allow consecutive terms for governor. In 1966, he was elected governor after defeating the...

launched a campaign in the 1960s to popularize Okie as a positive term for Oklahomans; however, the Democrats

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

used the campaign, and the fact that Bartlett was born in Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

, as a political tool against him, and further degraded the term for a time.

However, in 1968, Governor Bartlett made Reddick, the originator of the California usage, an honorary Okie. And in the early 1970s, Merle Haggard

Merle Haggard

's country song Okie from Muskogee
Okie from Muskogee (song)
"Okie from Muskogee" is an American country music song performed by its co-writer, Merle Haggard. Released in September 1969, the song became one of the most famous of his career.-Background:...

was a hit on national airwaves.

Also during the 1970s, the term Okie became familiar to most Californians as a prototype of a subcultural group, just like the resurgence of Southern American regionalism and renewal of ethnic American (Irish American

Irish American

Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...

, Italian American

Italian American

An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...

or Polish American

Polish American

A Polish American , is a citizen of the United States of Polish descent. There are an estimated 10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the population of the United States...

) identities in the Northeast

Northeastern United States

The Northeastern United States is a region of the United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau.-Composition:The region comprises nine states: the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; and the Mid-Atlantic states of New...

and Midwest states at the time.

However, in the early 1990s the California Department of Transportation

California Department of Transportation

The California Department of Transportation is a government department in the U.S. state of California. Its mission is to improve mobility across the state. It manages the state highway system and is actively involved with public transportation systems throughout the state...

refused to allow the name of the "Okie Girl" restaurant to appear on a roadside sign on Interstate 5

Interstate 5

Interstate 5 is the main Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific Ocean coastline from Canada to Mexico . It serves some of the largest cities on the U.S...

, arguing that the restaurant's name insulted Oklahomans; only after protracted controversy (and a letter from the Governor of Oklahoma) did the agency relent.

Since the 1990s, the children and grandchildren of Okies in California changed the very 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.

While some Oklahomans refer to themselves as Okies without prejudice, and it is often used jocularly; in a manner similar to the use of Hoosier
Hoosier
Hoosier is the official demonym for a resident of the U.S. state of Indiana. Although residents of most U.S. states typically adopt a derivative of the state name, e.g., "Indianan" or "Indianian", natives of Indiana rarely use these. Indiana adopted the nickname "Hoosier State" more than 150...

by Indiana

Indiana

Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

ns, Yankee
Yankee
The term Yankee has several interrelated and often pejorative meanings, usually referring to people originating in the northeastern United States, or still more narrowly New England, where application of the term is largely restricted to descendants of the English settlers of the region.The...

by Northeasterners, or "Cracker

Cracker

Cracker may refer to:* Cracker , a type of biscuit, usually salted or savory edible* Cracker , a mountain peak in Glacier National Park** Cracker , located in the Lewis Range, Glacier National Park in the U.S...

" by native Floridians, none of whom considers these terms for themselves particularly insulting, many others still find the term highly offensive.

Muskogee

Muskogee, Oklahoma

Muskogee is a city in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, United States. It is the county seat of Muskogee County, and home to Bacone College. The population was 38,310 at the 2000 census, making it the eleventh-largest city in Oklahoma....

Mayor John Tyler Hammons

John Tyler Hammons

John Tyler Hammons is the 47th and current Mayor of Muskogee, a city of about 40,000 people in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. He was elected on May 13, 2008, as a 19-year old freshman at the University of Oklahoma, after winning 70% of the vote in a runoff election against 70-year-old, three-time...

used the phrase "I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee" as the successful theme of his 2008 mayoral campaign.

Novels

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....

won the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

for its controversial characterization of the Okie lifestyle and journey to California.

In the Cities in Flight series of science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

novels (1956–1962) by James Blish

James Blish

James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...

, 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 labor 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 City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

as one such Okie city, though there are hundreds less.

In On the Road
On the Road
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...

, the road novel by Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

– written between 1948 and 1949, although not published until 1957 – the term appears to refer to some of the people the main character, a worker on a cotton plantation in California, meets during his trips around the states.

In the novel Paint it Black by Janet Fitch

Janet Fitch

Janet Fitch is most famously known as the author of the Oprah's Book Club novel White Oleander, which became a film in 2002. She is a graduate of Reed College, located in Portland, Oregon....

, the protagonist (an LA punk-rocker in the early '80s) thinks of herself and her family as "Okies."

Music

California Okie – Buck Owens
Buck Owens
Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. , better known as Buck Owens, was an American singer and guitarist who had 21 No. 1 hits on the Billboard country music charts with his band, the Buckaroos...

(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
Merl Lindsay
Merle Lindsay Salathiel , better known as Merl Lindsay, was one of the premier American Western swing musicians from the 1930s to the mid-1960s and founder of Merl Lindsay and His Oklahoma Night Riders.-Biography:...

and the Oklahoma Night Riders (1947).
Oakie Boogie
Oakie Boogie
"Oakie Boogie" is a Western swing dance song written by Johnny Tyler in 1947. It is recognizable by its refrain:Jack Guthrie's version reached #3 on the charts in 1947 and is often included in the list of the first rock and roll songs...

– Jack Guthrie and His Oklahomans (1947) – considered by many to be the first Rock & Roll song.
Okie – J. J. Cale (1974).
Okie From Muskogee
Okie from Muskogee (song)
"Okie from Muskogee" is an American country music song performed by its co-writer, Merle Haggard. Released in September 1969, the song became one of the most famous of his career.-Background:...

– Merle Haggard
Merle Haggard
Merle Ronald Haggard is an American country music singer, guitarist, fiddler, instrumentalist, and songwriter. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band The Strangers helped create the Bakersfield sound, which is characterized by the unique twang of Fender Telecaster guitars, vocal harmonies,...

(1969) – 58th on the Top 500 Country Music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk 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.
Okanagan Okie – Stompin' Tom Connors
April The 14th Part I & Ruination day Part II "And the Okies fled. And the great emancipater" (Time-The Revelator – Gillian Welch. Welch/Rawlings (2001).

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 1-932339-87-6
McDaniel, Wilma Elizabeth. California Okie Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

. All works.
Rose, Dorothy. Dustbowl Okie Exodus. Seven Buffaloes Press, 1987. ISBN 9998546451

Other 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 0-916380-25-4
Haslam, Gerald. Okies: Selected Stories. Santa Barbara, California: Peregrine Smith, Inc, 1975. ISBN 0-87905-042-X
Hudson, Lois Phillips. Reapers of the Dust. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1984. ISBN 0873511778

Other uses

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
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Brown was one of the 8th Army Air Forces
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces was the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II, and the direct predecessor of the United States Air Force....

' 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
Bristow, Oklahoma
Bristow is a city in Creek County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 4,325 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Bristow is located at ....

, and he was inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame in 1994.
OKIE (Oklahoma Israel Exchange) is an independent non-profit organization established to coordinate economic and cultural activities between the state of Oklahoma and the state of Israel. It was created 1992 by Oklahoma Governor David Walters.
The 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
Apollo 10
Apollo 10 was the fourth manned mission in the American Apollo space program. It was an F type mission—its purpose was to be a "dry run" for the Apollo 11 mission, testing all of the procedures and components of a Moon landing without actually landing on the Moon itself. The mission included the...

lunar module Snoopy by Commander Thomas P. Stafford
Thomas Patten Stafford
Thomas Patten Stafford is a retired American Air Force lieutenant general and former NASA astronaut. He flew aboard two Gemini space flights; and in 1969 was the commander of Apollo 10, the second manned mission to orbit the Moon and the first to fly a lunar module there.In 1975, Stafford was...

before it was sent into orbit around the sun.
The USS Oklahoma
USS Oklahoma (BB-37)
USS Oklahoma , the only ship of the United States Navy to ever be named for the 46th state, was a World War I-era battleship and the second of two ships in her class; her sister ship was . She, along with her sister, were the first two U.S...

, christened March 23, 1914, was affectionately called "Okie" (or "Okey") by its crew.

External links

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