What Great Literary Work Depicted the Life of a Family of "Okies"?

Pejorative term referring to an Oklahoman

Okie

Rear view of an Okie's machine, passing through Amarillo, Texas, heading west, 1941
Regions with significant populations
Oklahoma	~three million
Languages
American English: Oklahoma dialect, Southern American English, Midland American English
Religion
Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, Lutheran
Related indigenous groups
White Southerners

An Okie is a resident, native, or cultural descendant of Oklahoma.

In California, the term came to refer to very poor migrants from Oklahoma coming to expect for employment. The Grit Bowl and the "Okie" migration of the 1930s brought in over a million displaced people, many headed to the farm labor jobs in the Primal Valley. By 1950, iv million individuals, or one quarter of all persons born in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri, lived exterior the region, primarily in the Westward.^[ane]

Prominent Okies included singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie and country musician Merle Haggard. John Steinbeck wrote about Okies moving west in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, which was filmed in 1940 by John Ford.

Slap-up Depression usage [edit]

In the mid-1930s, during the Grit Bowl era, large numbers of farmers fleeing ecological disaster and the Slap-up Depression migrated from the Cracking Plains and Southwest regions to California mostly along historic U.S. Route 66. Californians began calling all migrants by that proper name, even though many newcomers were not actually Oklahomans. The migrants included people from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico, but were all referred to as "Okies" and "Arkies".^[2] More than of the migrants were from Oklahoma than any other state, and a total of 15% of the Oklahoma population left for California.^{[ citation needed ]}

Ben Reddick, a free-lance journalist and later on 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". The starting time known usage was an unpublished private postcard from 1907.^[3]

Living conditions in California during the Groovy Depression [edit]

In one case the Okie families migrated from Oklahoma to California, they frequently were forced to piece of work on big farms to support their families. Because of the minimal pay, these families were often forced to live on the outskirts of these farms in shanty houses they built themselves. These homes were normally fix up in groups called Squatter Camps or Shanty Towns, which were often located about the irrigation ditches which ran along the outskirts of these farms. Indoor plumbing was inaccessible to these migrant workers, and and so they were forced to resort to using outhouses. Unfortunately, because of the minimal space allotted to the migrant workers, their outhouses were normally located most the irrigation ditches, and some waste material would inevitably runoff into the water. These irrigation ditches provided the Okie families with a water supply.^[iv] Due to this lack of sanitation in these camps, disease ran rampant amidst the migrant workers and their families. Also contributing to illness was the fact that these Shanty Boondocks homes that the Okie migrant workers lived in had no running water, and because of their minimal pay medical attention was out of the question. However, what native Californians failed to realize at the time was that these Okie migrant farm workers did not always live in the weather that the Dust Bowl left them in. In fact, frequently these families had once owned their own farms and had been able to support themselves. This had often placed these migrant workers in a relatively comfortable situation for these families prior to the devastating drought (the Grit Basin) in Oklahoma.^[5]

Post-Great Depression usage [edit]

Historian James Gregory has explored the long-term impact of the Okies on California gild. He notes that in The Grapes of Wrath, novelist John Steinbeck saw the migrants becoming active union and New Deal agitators demanding higher wages and better housing weather condition. Steinbeck did not foresee that nigh Okies would move into well-paid jobs in state of war industries in the 1940s. When a human being named Oliver Carson visited Kern County in the 1930s, he became fascinated with the Okie culture and lifestyle. He travelled back in 1952 to see what the Okies had made of themselves and saw that the departure was astounding. They were non living in roadside encampments anymore or driving run-down cars. They had better living situations and better views on life.^[6]

When World War II began, large amounts of money went flooding to California to assist the U.s.a. in the war. This was great for the Okies, more jobs, better jobs, opened up and they were able to make their lives better over fourth dimension. Other Okies saw this and decided they wanted to get to California to brand even more money. An oil worker wanted to make enough money to go dorsum to Oklahoma and buy a farm, another family wanted to rent out their farm while they were away to potentially double their earnings. These families that came during the 1940s lived in California'due south biggest cities, Los Angeles, San Diego and various cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other families who moved to California before had moved to the valleys and rural areas.^[6]

While many families had plans to leave California afterward making a skillful corporeality of coin, they didn't. The children and grandchildren of Okies seldom returned to Oklahoma or farming, and are now full-bodied in California'southward cities and suburbs. Long-term cultural impacts include a commitment to evangelical Protestantism, a love of country music, political conservatism, and stiff back up for traditional moral and cultural values.^{[seven] [eight]}

Information technology has been said that some Oklahomans who stayed and lived through the Dust Basin encounter the Okie migrants as quitters who fled Oklahoma. Well-nigh Oklahoma natives are as proud of their Okies who fabricated skilful in California every bit are the Okies themselves – and of the Arkies, West Texans, and others who were bandage in with them.^[9]

In the later half of the 20th century, in that location became increasing evidence that any pejorative meaning of the term Okie was changing; erstwhile and nowadays Okies began to utilise the characterization equally a bluecoat of honour and symbol of the Okie survivor attitude.^[ten]

In one case, Republican Oklahoma Governor Dewey F. Bartlett launched a entrada in the 1960s to popularize Okie as a positive term for Oklahomans;^[eleven] notwithstanding, the Democrats used the campaign, and the fact that Bartlett was born in Ohio, as a political tool against him,^[12] and further degraded the term for some fourth dimension.

In 1968, Governor Bartlett made Reddick, the originator of the California usage, an honorary Okie. And in the early 1970s, Merle Haggard'due south country vocal Okie from Muskogee was a hit on national airwaves. During the 1970s, the term Okie became familiar to most Californians as a paradigm of a subcultural grouping, simply like the resurgence of Southern American regionalism and renewal of ethnic American (Irish American, Italian American or Shine American) identities in the Northeast and Midwest states at the time.

In the early 1990s the California Department of Transportation refused to allow the name of the "Okie Girl" eatery to appear on a roadside sign on Interstate 5, arguing that the eating place's name insulted Oklahomans; only later protracted controversy and a letter of the alphabet from the Governor of Oklahoma did the agency relent.^[xiii] Since then, the children and grandchildren of Okies in California changed the meaning of Okie to a self-championship 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'south 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 past Indianans, Yankee by New Englanders, or "Cracker" by native Floridians, none of whom consider these terms specially insulting when applied to themselves, others still observe the term highly offensive.

Muskogee Mayor John Tyler Hammons used the phrase "I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee" as the successful theme of his 2008 mayoral campaign. He was 19 years old at the fourth dimension. 2020 U.S. Presidential candidate and U.Southward. Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren,^[14] who was built-in in Oklahoma, frequently referenced her "Okie" roots during campaign events.^[fifteen]

In popular civilization [edit]

Novels

• John Steinbeck'south 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize for its characterization^[16] of the Okie lifestyle and journey to California.
• In James Blish'due south Cities in Flight science fiction series, the term "Okie" was applied in a similar context to entire cities that, thanks to an anti-gravity device, accept flying to the stars in order to escape an economic collapse on Globe. Working as a migrant labor forcefulness, these cities human action as cultural pollinators, spreading applied science and knowledge throughout the expanding human being civilization. The later novels focus on the travels of New York City as one such Okie city, though there are many others.
• In the novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac – written between 1948 and 1949, although not published until 1957 – the term appears to refer to some of the people the main character, a New York author, meets in one of his trips around the U.s..
• In the novel Paint it Black by Janet Fitch, the protagonist (an LA punk-rocker in the early 1980s) thinks of herself and her family unit as "Okies."
• Frank Bergon's 2011 novel, Jesse'due south Ghost, draws attention to today's sons and daughters of the California Okies portrayed in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
• Kristin Hannah'southward 2021 novel The Iv Winds portrays the life, struggle and survival of a single mother and her ii children during the days post-obit the Great depression (1929) and Grit Bowls. She and people like her are oft termed as Okies by the Californian natives.
• Sanora Babb's 2004 novel, Who'southward Names are Unknown is based on the author's first-manus experience. The novel was originally scheduled to be published in 1939, but publication was shelved when Steinbeck'south The Grapes of Wrath came out. The title is taken from a legal eviction notice.

Music

• April The 14th Part I & Ruination day Office Two "And the Okies fled. And the swell emancipater" (Time-The Revelator – Gillian Welch. Welch/Rawlings (2001).
• California Okie – Buck Owens (1976).
• Dear Okie – Doye O'Dell/Rudy Sooter (1948) – "Dearest Okie, if y'all see Arkie, tell 'im Tex's got a job for him out in Californy."
• Israelites & Okies -- The Lost Dogs (from the 2010 album Old Angel).^[17]
• Lonesome Okie Goin' Home – Merl Lindsay and the Oklahoma Night Riders (1947).
• Oakie Boogie – Jack Guthrie and His Oklahomans (1947) – considered by many to be the first Rock & Roll vocal.
• Okanagan Okie – Stompin' Tom Connors.^[eighteen]
• Okie – J. J. Cale (1974).
• Okie From Muskogee – Merle Haggard (from the 1969 album of the same name).
• "Okie" – a parody of the above by Patrick Sky from his 1973 album Songs that made America Famous.
• Okie Skies – The Trophy Brothers (2004).
• Okies in California – Doye O'Dell (1949).
• Oklahoma Swing-by Reba McEntire and Vince Gill (1990).
• Ramblin' Okie – Terry Fell.
• Southeast Texas Girl – Jeremy Castle (2021) – "I'm equally Okie as a rose rock, native as the red fern grows."

Poetry

• Cahill, Charlie. Point Blank Poetry: Okie Land 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-half dozen
• McDaniel, Wilma Elizabeth. California Okie Poet Laureate. All works.
• Rose, Dorothy. Dustbowl Okie Exodus. Vii Buffaloes Press, 1987. OCLC 15689360

Other fiction

• Charles, Henry P. That dumbest Okie, and other brusque stories: Oklahoma! "The land of honest men and slender women." Wetzel, c1952.
• Cuelho, Artie, Jr. At the Rainbow's Terminate: A Dustbowl Collection of Prose and Poesy of the Okie Migration to the San Joaquin Valley. Big Timber, Montana: 7 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 Social club Press, 1984. ISBN 0-87351-177-8

Encounter besides [edit]

• Black Lord's day
• Dust Bowl
• Grapes of Wrath
• Migrant worker
• Okie Dialect/Southern Drawl/Southern American English
• Hillbilly Highway
• Redneck
• Will Rogers
• Yokel

References [edit]

Notes

1. ^ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, "Ane or Two Things I Know well-nigh Us: Rethinking the Paradigm and Role of the 'Okies'," Canadian Papers in Rural History 1998 ten: fifteen–43
2. ^ Pryor, Alton (October 27, 2012). Little Known Tales in Oklahoma History. Stagecoach Publishing. p. 55. The migrants included people from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico, simply were all referred to every bit "Okies" and "Arkies."
3. ^ Stewart, Roy P. "Postal Card Proves Sooners Were 'Okies' Way Dorsum In 1907," Thomes Mrs. Agnes Hooks of Thomas with a postal card mailed at Newcastle, Ind. in 1907, address to a Miss Agness Kirkbridge, with the salutation: "Hello Okie – Will meet you next Monday dark." Signed: Myrtle M. Pence. Mrs. Hooks says Agness Kirkbridge was an aunt of hers. The Kirkbridge family unit came to Oklahoma Territory in 1904 and settled south of Custer City.
4. ^ DeAngelis, Gina (2003). "Baked Out and Broke: The Okie Migration". Asphalt. 24 (4).
5. ^ Curtis, James (1986). "Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Civilisation of the Cracking Depression". Winterthur Portfolio. 1 (21): 1–20. doi:ten.1086/496257. S2CID 162347932.
6. ^ ^{a b} Gregory, James (1989). American Exodus: The Grit Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. Oxford University Press. pp. 174–175.
7. ^ James Northward. Gregory, "Dust Bowl Legacies: The Okie Impact on California, 1939–1989," California History (1989) 68#three pp 74–85.
8. ^ James North. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Civilisation in California (1998)
9. ^ Haslam, The Other California, p. 107: "Says Jim Young, chancellor of Bakersfield College, 'I'm proud of my folks and anybody else who came out here and were chosen Okies, and who made new lives for themselves.' Immature, of grade, symbolizes well why others in the Cardinal Valley are then proud to claim that term Okie.
10. ^ "State to Print 'Okie Dough'," The Daily Oklahoman, Thursday, 27 Oct 1955, p. 20, col. 3: "A new type of coin, designed to heave Oklahomans' pride in the Sooner state, soon will be off the press as part of the Greater Oklahoma City Forward committee'southward program. Known as "Okie Dough," the script volition also be useful in braging [sic] in the other 47 states."
11. ^ Editorial, "Speaking of Okies," The Daily Oklahoman, June 6, 1970, p. 8, col. one: "Bartlett did not invent the term. He simple recognized its existence in the vocabulary – and gambled that zero was more likely to erase its stigma than letting outsiders know Sooners themselves rather liked being chosen Okies."
12. ^ "Democrat Gets In Plug for Donkey," The Daily Oklahoman, Fri, June 2, 1970, p. three. col. 1: "In a release last week, Kennedy [Country Democratic Chairman J.C. Kennedy] charged, the pins were campaign buttons for Gov. Bartlett. He demanded Monday that state employees be instructed to view all Okie-type paraphernalia every bit political cloth and that it be treated in accord with state rules and regulations governing such matters."
13. ^ David Colker, "Los Angeles County News in Cursory: Convulse Delivers Knockout Punch to Okie Girl Eatery," Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1994, Part B, p. two.
14. ^ Library, C. N. N. (ix January 2015). "Elizabeth Warren Fast Facts". CNN . Retrieved 2019-11-15 .
15. ^ "Warren's rivals have tried for years to brand her every bit an elitist". Pol . Retrieved 2019-xi-fifteen .
16. ^ Igler, The Man Tradition in California, p. 144: "Charles Schindo, in Grit Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination (1997), contended that Steinbeck and his fellow 1930s liberals were elitists who misinterpreted the Okie feel and then imposed that leftist misinterpretation on the American consciousness."
17. ^ "Erstwhile Angel".
18. ^ •–•Okanagan Okie•–• Archived February 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine

Farther reading

• Gregory, James Northward. American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Civilisation in California. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-504423-i
• Haslam, Gerald West. The Other California: The Nifty Central Valley in Life and Letters. University of Nevada Press, 1993. ISBN 0-87417-225-X
• Igler, David; Clark Davis. The Man Tradition in California. Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. ISBN 0-8420-5027-2
• La Chapelle, Peter. Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California. Berkeley: Academy of California Press, 2007. ISBN 0520248899
• Lange, Dorothea; Paul S. Taylor. An American Exodus: A Record of Homo 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 0-394-57453-2
• Ortiz, Roxanne Dunbar. Ruby-red Clay: Growing upwardly Okie. New York: Verso, 1997. ISBN 1-85984-856-vii
• Ortiz, Roxanne Dunbar. "1 or 2 Things I Know about Us: Rethinking the Prototype and Role of the 'Okies'," Canadian Papers in Rural History 1996 10: fifteen–43
• Shindo, Charles J. Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination. Lawrence: Academy Press of Kansas, 1997. ISBN 978-0-7006-0810-2
• Sonneman, Toby F. Fruit Fields in My Blood: Okie Migrants in the Westward. Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press, 1992. ISBN 0-89301-152-5
• Weisiger, Marsha L. Land of Enough: Oklahomans in the Cotton Fields of Arizona, 1933–1942. Norman: Academy of Oklahoma Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8061-2696-5
• Windschuttle, Keith. "Steinbeck's Myth of the Okies". The New Criterion, Vol. xx, No. 10, June 2002

External links [edit]

• What Happened to Okies After "The Grapes of Wrath"
• The Okie Legacy – ezine
• An "Okie Knowledge" Quiz from the official spider web folio of Oklahoma state government
• Embrace your "inner Okie"
• Unidentified Depression Family unit

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okie

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