Saturday, April 9, at the Oklahoma History Center
Presented by the Oklahoma Historical Society, the Oklahoma History Symposium will be held on Saturday, April 9, 2022, at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City. This one-day symposium offers scholars, historians, authors, and museum professionals a forum to share their work with history enthusiasts. Three professional development sessions will be offered for museum professionals, volunteers, and students.
Registration
In an effort to make historical and cultural programming available anyone who wishes to attend, we have made the Oklahoma History Symposium free and open to the public. We do ask that attendees register in advance. Registration is now open and will close on April 1.
Symposium Schedule
| 10–10:50 a.m. | Book signing featuring Connie Cronley, author of A Life on Fire: Oklahoma’s Kate Barnard (OU Press, 2021) Russell Cobb, author of The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America’s Weirdest State (Bison Books, 2020) Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin, editors of This Land Is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s (OU Press, 2021) A. Kenneth Stern, author of Oklahoma’s Chief of Public Instruction 1890-2015: The Position, The Politics, and The Public Servants (New Forums Press, 2021)
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| 11–11:30 a.m. | Meeting of the OHS Membership followed by the Organizational Meeting of the OHS Board of Directors |
| 11:30 a.m.–12:15 p.m. | Keynote speaker Connie Cronley
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Our keynote speaker will be author Connie Cronley. Cronley is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and recipient of the Oklahoma Historical Society’s 2021 E. E. Dale Award for Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History for A Life on Fire: Oklahoma’s Kate Barnard. Attendees may order a boxed lunch from Mediterranean Imports for $12. Lunch is optional and is not required to attend the keynote. Historical Sessions
| 12:30–1 p.m. | “Rising from the Ashes: An Archaeology of Memory, Landscape, and Racial Violence,” Nkem Ike, doctoral candidate, University of Tulsa This presentation compares three historic sites that have been impacted by reprehensible anti-Black race massacres: Springfield, Illinois (1908); Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921); and Rosewood, Florida (1923). While there are 127 documented sites of race massacres in the United States between 1824 to 1949, only these three were the subject of archaeological exploration. This research examines the strain that anti-Black violence and race massacres have on descendant generations’ abilities to establish a sense of place when the space around them is constantly in flux. |
| 1:10–1:40 p.m. | “Japanese Wrestlers in a 1960s Oklahoma College Town,” Roger Moore, doctoral student, Oklahoma State University Following World War II, relations between Japanese and American conservatives were strained for myriad reasons. Negative attitudes toward those of Asian descent in the US dated to the nineteenth century and continued with the internment camps of the 1940s; the end of World War II and the dropping of atomic bombs led to mistrust and tensions in the decades to follow Representing a small, rural community in Oklahoma, wrestler Myron Roderick forged a relationship with Japanese wrestling representatives at the 1956 Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. This connection led to Japanese wrestlers attending Oklahoma State University in the 1960s. This session will reveal how wrestling can be a model to show sports’ ability to soften cross-cultural and racial divides. Despite often negative and stereotypical attitudes toward Japanese elsewhere, a small Midwestern community was able to accept and participate, although minimally, in attempts at healing the racial divide created by World War II. |
| 1:50–2:40 p.m. | “Mvskoke Allotments in ‘The Oil Capital of the World’: Reflections of Tulsa’s First Landowners,” panel discussion, the Lucinda Hickory Research Institute and Philbrook Museum of Art From the Lucinda Hickory Research Institute (LHRI) Tatianna Duncan, LHRI founder and executive director Russell Cobb, University of Alberta, LHRI vice-chair, author Gano Perez, GIS Cultural Specialist at Muscogee Nation, LHRI Advisory Board DeAnalisa Jones, LHRI secretary and treasurer, MD/PhD candidate, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai From the Philbrook Museum of Art The story of Tulsa often features oilfield discoveries, railroad booms, and rags-to-riches oilmen. The main event in the story is the city’s ascendancy to “The Oil Capital of the World” in the 1920s. Prestigious museums, art deco buildings, and the Golden Driller stand as a testament to this narrative. In this panel discussion, representatives from Philbrook Museum of Art will join The Lucinda Hickory Research Institute to discuss their mission to preserve the names and events left out of that narrative. Many Mvskoke landowners were betrayed and swindled as Tulsa became the financial center of the nation’s largest oil patch. Their names are rarely commemorated in public institutions, parks, or cultural centers. Yet their lives were well documented in real estate transactions, newspapers, and oral histories. In the spirit of truth and healing, Philbrook Museum of Art and The Lucinda Hickory Research Institute will discuss their ongoing research into the stories of a handful of the original allottees. |
| 2:50–3:20 p.m. | “The Elder Dunjee: An Examination of the Life and Influence of John William Dunjee in Early Oklahoma,” Edith Ritt-Coulter, doctoral candidate, University of North Texas When the history of Oklahoma City’s African American community is discussed, Roscoe Dunjee’s influence resonates within the historical record. Dunjee is noted as a leader who crusaded for Black equality through his work with the NAACP, various community groups, and his newspaper, the Black Dispatch. This session seeks to extend the story of Dunjee by acknowledging the legacy of his father, John William Dunjee. The elder Dunjee contributed to the establishment of African American churches throughout Oklahoma and Indian Territories. He instilled in his children a sense of political consciences rooted in the ideology of racial uplift that impacted Oklahoma’s Black communities and communities throughout the United States. The goal presentation is to share the development of Oklahoma City’s African American community, receive feedback from fellow historians, and present a new perspective on understanding the impact of the Dunjee family as a whole. |
| 3:30–4 p.m. | “The Native American Culture Group: Indigenous Community Organizing and Activism at a Federal Prison in 1970s Oklahoma,” John Truden, doctoral candidate, University of Oklahoma
Indigenous prisoners in state and federal prisons often organized cultural associations. These associations—which have parallels with modern organizations such as Huy in the Washington State Penitentiary—were created to build intertribal community, focus on Indigenous cultures, and raise awareness. About thirty such groups existed across the United States and Canada during the 1970s. In 1972, Indigenous inmates at El Reno Federal Correctional Institute formed one such association, the Native American Culture Group (NACG). In addition to holding regular meetings into the mid-1970s, producing a newsletter, and making ties with organizations, the NACG was featured in a short film by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This session will provide context about this film and the organizations created by Indigenous prisoners. |
| 4:10–4:40 p.m. | “Cora Diehl Harvey and Helen Churchill Candee: An Insider, an Outsider, and the Fluidity of Power in Oklahoma,” Chrissy Carlson and Sandi M. Colby, graduate students, University of Central Oklahoma
In 1891, Cora Diehl was the first and only woman elected to office in Oklahoma Territory, but for the next one hundred and thirty years, her history was largely unknown. Cora’s marriage in 1893 signaled her erasure from Oklahoma memory, but for the remainder of Cora’s life, she worked inside and outside the specified gender constructions of the Progressive Era to achieve power and autonomy unique for a woman of the early twentieth century. Unlike Cora Diehl, whose life and work was rooted in Oklahoma, Helen Churchill Candee was an outsider, an Eastern socialite whose only interest in the territory was as the means to secure the divorce that the New York courts had denied her. While she only lived in Oklahoma a short time, Candee was exposed to and recognized the opportunities available to women in the region. She utilized those opportunities to their fullest, reinventing herself multiple times and using her acquired authority and influence to improve her own life and the lives of others. These two women leveraged the fluidity of power in territorial Oklahoma to achieve both social and political access to power in a country that still withheld political participation from women. This session will compare these women and their methods, impacts, and results. |
