African Americans in Oklahoma Before 1954
Resistance
Throughout the country, most African Americans opposed segregation laws and ordinances. Because of the relative wealth of Black communities, the more complex racial identities of the population, and Black leaders comfortable with risk, Oklahoma became center stage for the fight to end segregation and advance civil rights. Blacks challenged segregation on every front in the state. Several of those challenges led to real change, both through the courts and through persuasion. In many instances, the lessons learned and the precedents set in Oklahoma rippled throughout the national civil rights effort, making it stronger and more effective.
African American individuals, communities, and organizations all contributed to the effort to resist segregation and increase opportunity. The Negro Protective League, which formed during the effort to add segregation requirements to the state constitution, allowed Black Oklahomans to coordinate their efforts and pursue sustained protest. In 1913, Black Oklahomans, led by a group of Oklahoma City doctors, organized its first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1931, Oklahoma became the first state to have a state conference of NAACP chapters. Newspapers published by Black Oklahomans shared information about protests and other ways to get involved. Civic organizations, such as the Ministerial Alliance, the Negro Business League, and fraternal organizations supported these organizations and their goals. Black religious leaders connected these groups to large audiences, provided meeting space, and coordinated tactics.
Roscoe Dunjee’s The Black Dispatch is one of several newspapers that helped Black Oklahomans resist Jim Crow laws.
Voting
Prior to statehood, few restrictions prevented Blacks from voting in Oklahoma. Democrats of the time did not try to appeal to Black voters, but both the Republican and Socialist Parties did. Because of the long-standing support African Americans gave to the Republican Party, leaders valued their votes and participation. This meant that African Americans participated in campaigns, elections, and party appointments until the 1910s in Oklahoma. Edward P. McCabe was appointed treasurer of Logan County. The first Territorial Legislature included a Black representative from Kingfisher named Green I. Currin. After a brutal attack on a Black man, Currin introduced the first civil rights bill in Oklahoma’s history, which failed to become law by one vote. David Wallace followed Currin to serve in the second Territorial Legislature.
Black political activity continued without controversy into statehood but only briefly. The first state legislature also included A. C. Hamlin, an African American from Guthrie, as a representative. He convinced the lawmakers to designate a large amount of money for Taft School, which educated Black students who were blind, deaf, or orphaned.
Green I. Currin was the first African American legislator in the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature (image courtesy Oklahoma Senate).
A. C. Hamlin was a representative in the first Oklahoma State Legislature (image courtesy Oklahoma House of Representatives).
The Grandfather Clause and Guinn v. Oklahoma
In 1910, the Democrats proposed a voter registration petition that required a literacy test before a person could vote. A petition meant that the people of Oklahoma would vote on whether or not this measure became law. This measure could exclude many people in Oklahoma at the time because illiteracy was not uncommon in the early 1900s. The law had an exception that said:
but no person who was, on January 1, 1866, or any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to so read and write sections of such Constitution.
While this law did not say clearly that Blacks could not vote, the exception could only apply to whites because no African American could vote in 1866. It became known as the “grandfather clause.”
Many Black organizations, the Socialist Party of Oklahoma, and many Republicans worked to prevent this from becoming law. The Negro Protective League, once again, worked to educate the public and advocate against the petition. The Voter Registration Act did become law. Two state election officials, Frank Guinn and J. J. Beal, were indicted for conspiring to deny the vote to eligible individuals. This case made its way to the Supreme Court. It was the first case in which NAACP submitted a brief. The Supreme Court declared Oklahoma’s grandfather clause unconstitutional, and this victory would serve as evidence that the judicial system could help Black Americans protect their civil rights.
This summary of the Guinn case was printed in The Crisis, the official journal of the NAACP. The NAACP sued Oklahoma over the grandfather clause (image courtesy Internet Archive).
The party to which the overwhelming majority of Black Oklahomans belonged, the Republican Party, declined to actively oppose the grandfather clause, Sapulpa Evening Light, September 2, 1910.
The Industrial Democrat, a Socialist paper from Oklahoma City, educated its readership about the grandfather clause and encouraged readers to work against it. This articles is from July 23, 1910.
Black Voting After Guinn
Although they lost in the Supreme Court, lawmakers did not give up trying to exclude Black voters. In 1916, after the Guinn case ended, the legislature passed a “temporary” law that gave African Americans who had been prevented from registering to vote because of the grandfather clause the chance to register. They had a total of 12 days. Those Oklahomans who had already registered under the now-unconstitutional grandfather clause would remain registered. If Black Oklahomans failed to register in the short time period allowed, they would not be permitted to register.
No option existed for Blacks to vote outside of registering in those 12 days until 1939. In 1934, a Red Bird resident named I. W. Lane attempted to register to vote. The county registrar had been instructed not to register Black Oklahomans and turned Lane away. Lane sued, and the case made its way to the Supreme Court. In 1939, the court declared Oklahoma’s voting law unconstitutional in Lane v. Wilson. Thereafter, Black Oklahomans faced no legal barriers to voting.
Lane filed suit when the Wagoner County registrar refused to register him to vote (image courtesy town of Red Bird).
News about the Lane case appeared in Harlow’s Weekly, December 17, 1938.
Housing
There are untold numbers of stories about efforts to end residential segregation in each of the towns and cities of Oklahoma. Many towns in Oklahoma were sundown towns with signs posted that Black Oklahomans must leave the city limits before sundown or face dangerous consequences. In larger cities, there was usually an area that traditionally housed African Americans. In many cities in Oklahoma, the areas that typically offered housing to Blacks were the least desirable locations. For example, In Oklahoma City, these areas were often found in low-lying places near the Canadian River that flooded frequently. During territorial times, segregated living spaces were not enforced through law or ordinances. When Black Oklahomans challenged this customary segregation, government officials rapidly passed laws and ordinances enforcing segregation. The efforts of Black Oklahomans in Oklahoma City offers an example of how one community in the state challenged these rules.
The Campaign against Residential Segregation in Oklahoma City
Roscoe Dunjee’s furious editorial concerning a judge’s ruling in the Floyd case was printed in The Black Dispatch, June 6, 1919.
The Oklahoma City council passed a residential segregation ordinance in 1916. Its similarity to a Louisville, Kentucky, ordinance that was declared unconstitutional in 1917 meant that it would no longer be enforced. In 1918, the city council passed another ordinance to replace the earlier rule. The ordinance required those blocks that were majority white or Black needed the permission of 75 percent of the residents for a person of the other race to reside on that block. In 1919, William Floyd purchased a home on a block that was majority white. He was arrested.
Roscoe Dunjee and a dentist name A. P. Bethel bailed Floyd out of jail. They called a meeting at Tabernacle Baptist Church and over 400 people responded. At the meeting, the local NAACP agreed to take the case. The federal judge presiding over the case stated in a preliminary hearing that he believed the ordinance was unconstitutional. At that point, the city dropped the charges and Floyd was unable to continue his federal suit. For over a decade, the city limited its attempt to impose residential segregation.
In 1930, the city issued its first comprehensive development plan. The plan laid the groundwork for two ordinances, passed in 1933 and 1934, that segregated the city. In 1933, Governor William H. Murray supported the city council in their efforts. To prove the need for segregation, Murray issued an executive order and called out the National Guard to establish a “segregation zone.” Defending his interference in local matters, Murray said, “I have no law for this, but I have the power.”
Houses in Edwards Edition (2012.201.B0267.0191, OPUBCO Collection, OHS).
The Black community in Oklahoma City responded rapidly. Sidney Hawkins violated the segregation ordinance by purchasing a home on a “white” block. He was arrested numerous times for his attempts to reside in his house. Onie Allen’s case challenged Murray’s emergency order. The decisions in both cases once again found housing discrimination based on race to be unconstitutional. The effort to maintain segregation by white residents continued. In 1939, there were three bombings in the city in response to Blacks moving into white block.
In the late 1920s, the white residents of the east side formed an organization to ensure that Black residents were unable to move any further north. The main method they used to force segregation was the restrictive covenant, which is a legal document a person signs that limits their rights. In this case, whites who owned homes signed a legal document that promised they would not sell to a Black family. In 1948, this kind of restrictive covenant was declared unconstitutional in the case of Shelley v. Kraemer. Real estate agents steered clients to the sections of town that matched their race; this practice ensured the continuation of residential segregation.
Edwards Edition can be seen in the background of this image (2012.201.OVZ001.3971, OPUBCO Collection, OHS).
Although segregation was entrenched in the city, the areas where Blacks could establish neighborhoods expanded beyond the traditional, densely populated neighborhoods with the creation of the Edwards Edition in 1937. Entrepreneur Walter Edwards bought a large piece of land in northeast Oklahoma City located between NE 10th and NE 16th. He had a white man file the paperwork with the city. Then, he began selling the land to Black families. He was also able to get the Federal Housing Authority to give loans to Black families in 1939. This allowed many families to move to the new edition and create a new Black neighborhood in Oklahoma City.
Education
There was a single line in the Oklahoma state constitution that required separate schools for white and Black students, and the state devised a complicated funding method to pay for the dual school system. The constitution required that these facilities be “neutral,” meaning that one could not be better than the other. In reality, the Black schools were consistently funded at a much lower level. In Oklahoma City, the white schools were housed in four brick buildings, valued at $75,000. The single building for the Black school was made of wood and was worth $5,000. Black teachers made 65 percent of what white teachers were paid. The white libraries received thousands of dollars while the Black libraries received hundreds of dollars.
Once the NAACP organized in Oklahoma, they followed a strategy to equalize funding for Black students in the state. In 1947, Emma Lee Freeman, a teacher, filed a federal lawsuit arguing that her smaller salary was unconstitutional. The district court judge agreed.
The NAACP national office worked closely with the state chapter on many issues. The most well known is the effort to desegregate professional and graduate schools. This nationwide effort included two cases in Oklahoma that helped lead to the Brown v. Board of Education case that overturned the “separate but equal” rule. The first case, Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, began when Ada Lois Sipuel, a Chickasha native and Langston graduate, applied to the University of Oklahoma law school. She was denied because of her race.
Dunbar Elementary in Oklahoma City, November 21, 1957 (2012.201.B0317.0104, OPUBCO Collection, OHS).
Amos T. Hall, Thurgood Marshall, and Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, 1948 (2012.201.B1268.0091, OPUBCO Collection, OHS).
There was already a law that required an equivalent option for Black students seeking postgraduate education, and the district court ordered that the regents had to admit Sipuel or provide an equal option. Instead of admitting Sipuel, the regents attempted to rapidly establish a law school for Black students at the Capitol using the law library there. The case, led by Tulsa lawyer Amos T. Hall and Thurgood Marshall, then centered on whether those facilities were equal. The Supreme Court found that they were not and ordered that Sipuel be admitted to the University of Oklahoma law school.
The University of Oklahoma student newspaper prints news of Sipuel’s victory, January 13, 1948.
Shortly thereafter, George McLaurin, a Langston professor, applied to the University of Oklahoma to pursue a doctorate in education. Eventually, he was admitted but every moment on campus was segregated. He was required to sit away from the students in class, and the other buildings and services on campus were segregated for McLaurin as well. McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, also argued by Hall, centered on whether the on-campus segregation prevented McLaurin from receiving an equal education to his white peers. The Supreme Court agreed with McLaurin and found the law requiring segregation in higher education was unconstitutional.
These two cases, along with the Texas case Sweatt v. Painter, effectively ended segregation based on race in professional and graduate programs.
George McLaurin sitting in a segregated classroom, 1948, photo by George Tapscott (2012.201.B0391.0689, OPUBCO Collection, OHS).
Court System
In 1931, authorities arrested Jess Hollins, a Black man, for the rape of a white 17-year-old. Hollins was not able to read and write. He had no lawyer and affixed his thumbprint to a written confession even though there is strong evidence he was innocent. In response to reports that lynch mobs were forming in the Tulsa suburb of Sapulpa, a trial was held in the basement of the courthouse with no public notice and no jury. He received the death penalty and was scheduled to be executed. Shortly after the verdict, the Young Communist League and the International Labor Defense, two communist organizations working to expand their influence among African Americans, intervened in the case and began representing Hollins in appeals. They successfully got the first case thrown out, and he was to be retried. The communist organizations dropped out of the defense at this time because of a change in their policy. The second trial took place in 1934. The all-white jury found Hollins guilty and sentenced him to death. The national NAACP did not want to be associated with the case, so Roscoe Dunjee hired lawyers to represent Hollins and used The Black Dispatch to build support and funds for Hollins. The defense argued that Blacks were excluded from the jury, which violated Hollins’s constitutional rights. The Supreme Court agreed and ordered a new trial. His third trial also took place before an all-white jury, and he was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 1950.
Hollins v. State of Oklahoma (1935) previewed major changes involving the rights of those accused of crimes that would take place in the 1960s with cases such as Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Griffin v. California (1965), and Katz v. United States (1967).
The Oklahoma City Times reported on the Hollins case, December 31, 1931.
