The Silence of George Sawner

George Sawner, 1918

The Silence of George Sawner

At first, George W. F. Sawner (1859-1924) was a mystery to me, so what follows offers not only a plausible solution to the mystery, but the story of the pursuit. Though always identifying himself as a “mulatto” and never trying to pass for white (which he could easily have done), Sawner found wide social acceptance in Chandler Oklahoma because of the pedagogical achievements of his wife, and because he made money and spent it freely. When he died, the Chandler News-Publicist printed a 46-page booklet in commemoration, something that had never happened before in the history of the town and hasn’t happened since.

The dark places in Sawner’s past were three: the meaning of his very odd name; the initial source of his wealth; and his family background, including parents, siblings, and his first wife, by whom he had had a child, the only known fruit of his loins. In particular it is natural to wonder who was the father of such a brilliant man. All these things Sawner kept silent and secret. Now, after weeks of diligence in the archives--where I was aided by my indispensable colleague, Ruth Coker of Arlington TX, with a helping hand from Matt Hayes of Denver CO and Nancy Jordan formerly of Houston TX--it is possible to tell much of his untold story. Light can be shed on two of my dark places, but for the other it is only the faint light of a tremulous candle.

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George Sawner, 1918

A preliminary caution. Little is known of Sawner’s early life because he didn’t talk about it. A good deal now stands in the light of day, but shadows remain. In what follows, where the research does not allow of certainty, I mark it with conditional verbs. I say that something may have been or might have been or modify it with some form of possible or probable rather than declare that it is or was. The word mulatto is a special problem. It is now passé but from the Civil War to Civil Rights, it was the standard term for light colored blacks, even recognized in the census, where individuals received ethnic designations W, B, or M. The usage in the present essay is historical, so I place it within quotation marks.

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The Name Sawner

Born in Mississippi of a “mulatto” mother who was probably a slave, the boy’s name at birth and in childhood seems to have been George Farmer. His mother was Maria Farmer, born in Mississippi in 1831 and resting her bones in Guthrie Oklahoma, where she died in 1916 in the company of her son. If the F in his initials is for Farmer, the W should be for Washington, making him George Washington Farmer Sawner. The full name is pure guesswork on our part. There is no evidence.

We have three censuses for Maria Farmer: the 1870 showing her born in Alabama, the 1880 showing her born in Mississippi, and the 1900 showing her birthplace as Georgia and spelling her given name Mariah. Between 1905 and 1915 city directories show her residing in Guthrie. Her husband was probably Thomas Farmer, born Mississippi about 1831. Her obituary states that she had twelve children with only one of them surviving, so there were 11 children besides George. Her censuses taken together show eight of the eleven, which is not unreasonable if we suppose that three could have died in early childhood before a census was taken.

The first instance revealed by the records in which our protagonist identifies himself as George Sawner is his 1888 marriage to Ida Ferrell (1867-1927) in Fayette County, Texas. Ida was a black woman, and her one child with Sawner (Juanita, 1894-1989) was also black. For years after Ida and George divorced in 1899, the adult Juanita would go to Chandler to visit her father.

The surname Sawner calls attention to itself because, in the spelling that George always used, it is rare. The name is frequently misspelled, but never by George nor by people who knew him personally. The source of the

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name is the Norman-French word for a salt worker, Saunier, but the English language already had the perfectly good word Salter and didn’t need to borrow from the French. Today, scholars say, the name is most common in India. It also occurs in Ireland, Great Britain, and the United States, but it is rare in those countries and often becomes Saunders or something else common, losing the original spelling. When a person has such an unusual surname, it should be easy to find their male antecedents. One would think so, but that hasn’t proved to be the case. We might also romanticize the story (a temptation to which I was susceptible) and say that when George married Ida Ferrell, his mother wanted to teach him his true surname so that his children could inherit it. A pretty story but not true. Ida was George’s second wife. The 1880 census shows him living with a woman named Sarah. Nothing else is known about her, except that the couple lived next door to George’s mother in Richland Parish, northeastern Louisiana, one parish away from the Mississippi River.

But we are not through with the name Sonnier, for by it hangs a tale. Not only does the surname Sawner derive from the Norman-French Sonnier but in Fayette County TX in 1910 Sawner’s daughter Ida or perhaps his former wife supplied Ida with the surname Sonnie. The enumerator wrote it down, in the way it was given to him, without the final -r which is not pronounced (a fact that would have been unknown to his informant) but in the great office where the work of digital transcription takes place the Sonnie was replaced by Ida’s mother’s married name, Ferrell (misspelled!), since the mother was the head of the

Transcription of 1910 census for Ida Ferrel

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household. Such discrepancies in the census occur often enough that the good researcher always looks at the raw census, but somehow three team members neglected to do so. It was called to our attention by our fourth and newest member Nancy Jordan, who had already been working with the name Saunnier and had it on her radar. She even inferred that such was George Sawner’s surname. Guesswork, yes, but inspired guess work based on good research, for it is the spelling in the raw 1910 census that led us to the man we now suppose to be George’s father.

This is Armand A. Saunier of Hinds County, Mississippi. Born there in 1842, his life was cut short by the war, and he died in Spotsylvania in 1864. Armand enlisted 26 May 1861, when young George was just a few months passed his second birthday, so it would be doubtful that the boy had any memory of his father. His mother remembered her partner’s name, however, and George’s first wife had taught it to her mother, who must have supplied it for that 1910 census.

Of Armand A. Saunier, it is possible to say but little. His father had the same name (usually written A. A. Saunier), senior to his junior, and normally they would have fought together in the Civil War, as many fathers and sons did. The elder Saunier, it should be noted, was a doctor, though the war came too soon for his son to develop any career before his death in 1864. They were slave holders. In the 1840 Census, Armand Sr. shows 5 slaves, 3 female and 2 male, and newspaper ads establish beyond doubt that he was a doctor. For whatever reason, when he died in 1844 he was insolvent. His wife, Elizabeth (Isom) Saunier had two children with Dr. Saunier, the other being

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The South-Western Farmer (Raymond MS), 31 Jan. 1840

Catherine Priscilla Saunier). After the doctor’s death, Elizabeth then married Baldwin H. Beauchamp, who owned a large number of slaves. Both children are with Baldwin and Elizabeth Beauchamp in the 1850 Census along with four Beauchamp children. Baldwin Beauchamp died in 1858 and we find Elizabeth Beauchamp in the 1860 Census with Armand, Jr., Kate (Catherine), and four Beauchamp children.

On May 12, 1864, Armand, Jr. was killed in the War. His Civil War Records are transcribed incorrectly on some of the muster rolls due to misinterpretation of the handwriting. On some rolls, his first name is written Harmand or Harman. In the 1850 Slave Schedules, there is a 19 year old female slave born 1831, which was the exact year that George’s mother Mary Farmer was born. Unusual in a person born in slavery, she knew exactly the month, day, and year of her birth, and the date appears in her obituary. This fact argues that she was literate. This is as close as we can get to linking mother to son in the period of

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George’s childhood.
The facts cited in the above paragraph suggest that

Mary Farmer was probably born in slavery. And if she was, then by law her son would have been too. We know from the 1880 census that she was a “mulatto”, and George’s skin color was what was called “bright”--very close to white. Indeed, George could have passed, and looked so white that he sometimes caused trouble by riding the black cars of the Jim Crow trains. His friends used to tease him because red tints in his hair and complexion made him look Irish. (See photo above.) How his blood line got from Norman French to Irish is a question impossible to answer. His Hibernian hue may have been an accident of DNA, or it might have come through his Norman French ancestors, who as Northmen (Vikings) often had blonde or reddish hair. It is also worth noting that his grandfather, Armand Sr., was born in New York, a great pool for the mixing of DNA.

At the risk of being repetitious, I state again that we do not attribute the heritage outlined above to George Sawner without further proof. Unless additional evidence is found of his life before he moved to Texas when he was fifteen years old, it would seem that the only way to positively identify him would be DNA, and that is a minefield which at this stage of our research we have chosen not to enter. In the meantime, I must be satisfied to say that what I have presented above is not perfect but it’s plausible.

The Texas and Oklahoma Background

When George Sawner died in Chandler in 1924, obituaries in Oklahoma City’s Black Dispatch stated that before moving to Texas he had been a school teacher in Mississippi for some years. For a boy of George’s

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intelligence, this is a reasonable inference but the lack of record for black teachers in Mississippi means we found no evidence for it. The first newspaper account of Sawyer was in the 1887 LaGrange Journal, where he appears as as Vice-President of the Colored Teachers’ Institute, marking his advance in the teaching profession as well as his entry into educational politics. The article also contains the first instance we have found in print of the name which he would later always use: “G. W. F. Sawner,” which as stated earlier may have stood for George Washington Farmer Sawner.

The next reference to Sawner in the LaGrange paper comes in April of the following year when he married Ida Ferrell. She is usually thought of as the first wife, though as I have said the 1880 census shows Sawner in Louisiana living with a woman named Sarah, listed as his wife. Ida was probably born in Fayette County TX, where she lived most of her life and died. Her parents were David Ferrell (variously spelled) and Mary “Mollie” Reaves (variously spelled). Ida appears on three censuses, all of which identify her as black except for the 1910 which calls her “mulatto,” and the same is true of her mother. Sawner and Ida had one child, a girl named Juanita Sawner (1894-1989). In 1927 Juanita married Sidney Leon Hoggatt but spent her life as a school teacher, had no known children, and kept her maiden name. In later life she would travel to Chandler and stay with George, or with George and his last wife Lena. Her visits continued after George’s death.

We next find George Sawner in the LaGrange Journal in October of 1888, drunk and shooting at the sheriff. In later life Sawner didn’t drink except to share a bottle of wine with friends and was never known to get angry, so the excess of this episode is exceptional. The

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article appeared twice, a week apart, the second time with a partial retraction. Sawner was in Mosig’s saloon on “a high lonesome” when the trouble started. Part of the fun is in the reporter’s language, so I give the first article in full:

Sawner in the LaGrange Journal, Oct. 1889

In the retraction which appeared the next week, the Journal noted that Sawner claimed that the incident happened in front of the saloon rather than inside it and that “he did not point his pistol at the sheriff intentionally.” This last denial gives the episode a grotesque, slightly Faulkner-esque flavor.

Next in the story of Sawner’s early career comes the judge’s record which Ruth and I refer to as the not-a-

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probate document. (Ancestry.com had miscatalogued it.) It is the case of G. W. F. Sawner vs. Guthrie Building and Loan Association, in October 1895; the suit was dismissed but it does appear that George had a mortgage of $500 on the property where he lived and that he didn’t repay it for years. This fact, together with Ida's Death Certificate showing she had suffered from pellagra for fifteen years, which can only have been the result of years on an impoverished diet, puts a quietus to rumors that Sawner first became wealthy in his Guthrie years. Chronic alcoholism would have probably resulted in a disease of the liver, although, “pellagra” could be a euphemism for alcoholism, in the same way that women preferred to list them selves as widows rather than admit that they were divorced. But then the doctor would have written the cause of death as cirrhosis of the liver. However it was, if Sawner made money, he invested it. He didn’t spend it on food and housing or fancy clothes for his wife. They were probably eating cornbread and beans or greens, using bacon fat for flavoring, an addition which is known to destroy the essential niacin that green vegetables provide, resulting in the 4 D's: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and possibly even death.

If Sawner was not taking care of his wife, he was taking care of his career. In June 1892 the Guthrie Oklahoma State Capital reports what may be one of the first instances where the attorneys Twine, Sawner, and Saddler partnered together and tried a case. In the 1960s, more than seventy-five years later, these three men would be hailed for creating the first black legal partnership in Oklahoma. A legal newspaper from 1987 states that the partnership started in 1890, two years before the first newspaper clipping I found.

Rather than taking care of his wife, Sawyer may in 162

fact have been abusing her--that is, according to Ida’s own declaration. She claimed he beat and abused her. She last mentioned he beat her in August 1894, by which time he was living in Chandler. He was cruel and abusive, she states. He denied it, but they were granted a divorce in Fayette County, Texas, in April 1899. Ida kept the child.

When I first started researching Sawner, puzzled by the bleak poverty of his Mississippi origins, I attributed his success to some legacy provided by his missing father, as though the boy George were a character in a novel by Charles Dickens. In this sentimental version of the story he would first have changed his name from plain George Farmer to sonorous George W. F. Sawner and on that basis some years later he would have obtained his inheritance. But the records had another story to tell, not a story of inherited wealth but a story of true grit and mother wit as impressive in its way as any Dickensian tale. It was a tale of an exceptional individual but not of a unique one. To illustrate that fact, let us pause for a window on his first law partner W. H. Twine, whose career is not unlike Sawner’s in its boldness.

William Henry Twine, known around Muskogee as “the black tiger” for his crusading journalism, was born December 10, 1864, in Red House, Madison County, Kentucky, to Thomas J. and Lizzie Twine. Thomas Twine, a runaway slave who was part American Indian, worked as a wheelwright and constructed wagons. Young William Twine received his education in Xenia, Ohio, and after he graduated, he began a teaching career in Richmond, Indiana. He later moved to Mexia, Texas, and about this time began his study of law. During the land run, he located one mile east of present day Taft, a community that was originally named Twine in his honor. From 1898 to 1904 he edited the Pioneer Paper. His second newspaper, which he

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published from 1904 to1921, was the renowned Muskogee Cimeter. Realizing that the "Lily-White" forces had captured the Republican Party, Twine and others opposed statehood. With A. W. G. Sango and other prominent African American leaders he traveled to Washington, D.C., and met with Pres. Theodore Roosevelt. They hoped to convince him to overrule Oklahoma statehood because of the constitution's rejection of civil rights. However, on November 16, 1907, as Oklahoma became the forty-sixth state, the very first measure passed by the legislature established segregation on railway cars. As a result, Twine and Rentie, who was president of the Anti-Jim Crow League, filed suit. These and other civil rights battles drew the attention of the white caps, a.k.a. the Ku Klux Klan. For three years Twine’s life was constantly threatened. When the Klan wrote him a letter explaining what they were going to do to him, he printed it and responded that he and his six sons, armed, would walk to his office at nine o'clock every morning. The Klan never showed.

Twine was a tougher man than Sawner, more abrasive and aggressive, but both lives show the homely virtues of hard work and perseverance. One special talent that Sawner had was his ability to make friends and to win people’s trust. By 1904 or 1905, he had become a cotton broker, buying and selling it, and calling himself a “cotton buyer” in the occupation line of the 1910 census. His reputation extended to the states around Oklahoma. In 1912, Franklin’s Paper – The Statesman in Denver CO stated: “He is perhaps the only Afro-American who has been in touch with the English market, he having sold cotton from Boley to the Liverpool market at one time with consignment of $10,000, a check for which he received solely upon his reputation as a man of honest business methods.”

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His business dealings hit a pinnacle in 1920 when he bought an office building in Muskogee for $30,000, the equivalent of ten times that figure in today’s money.

Where did the Money Come From?

This was one of the three questions with which I started this research, and I gave my initial answer from the traditions of sentimental fiction. My story was off, but I leave it here as a reminder to myself about how wrong I can be. The method wasn’t wrong, though, since my story functioned as a thesis, and research requires a thesis to guide it.

To follow the development of Sawner’s career and, albeit less clearly, the accumulation of his wealth, what is required now is an issue-by-issue scrutiny of the Chandler papers along with Roscoe Dunjee’s The Black Dispatch out of Oklahoma City. In order to spare the reader tedious lists, it seems preferable to first give some of the highlights, beginning with Chandler, where Sawner first comes into social prominence. In his initial phase, beginning as far back as 1904, he was still teaching school and was a member of the Lincoln County Colored Teachers’ Association. Indeed, Sawner first appeared in Chandler newspapers for 1894 as a teacher--of arithmetic. He must have been moonlighting, or perhaps just exploring the new country, because by this time he was already established as a teacher in LaGrange, Fayette County TX.

From the first of his Chandler years he was also active in politics, a natural carry over from his years in the Territorial capital, making many trips to Guthrie (where he kept a residence for a few years) and remaining active in political committees, usually of the Republican variety. He ran for minor political offices but was elected to only one-- Justice of the Peace for Chandler Township in 1898. The

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Chandler Publicist (11 Nov. 1898), noted that Sawner was the “first colored man whom the republicans have thus honored. Several other colored men were elected to township office in the county.” Sawner had always identified himself as a “person of color,” and this fact elicited some mockery from one of the racist newspapers around the state, of which there were a great many. The Enid Wave-Democrat wrote: “de white folks bettah look out ober in Linkun county,” using an Uncle Remus dialect- spelling never employed by non-racist papers.

By October 1905 Sawner was prosperous enough to pay back the $500 he owed the Guthrie Building & Loan Association, money he must have owed from the 1892 lawsuit described above. Sawner had always done business in Muskogee, one of the regional capitals of the former Indian Territory. He was a member of the Oklahoma Commission on Inter-Racial Co-oeration, and by 1905 he was President and a Director of the Afro--American Real Estate & Investment Co. there (capital stock $50,000).

He was elected President of the Lincoln County “league for the social and commercial advancement of the Negro.” Within a few years his reputation had grown, and he was

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representing Chandler (or Lincoln County) nationally--e.g., at a National Negro Business League meeting in Chicago. He was a member of the Oklahoma Commission on Inter- Racial Co-operation. He was also active in fraternal organizations like the Masons (Grand Master of the Masonic Order) and the Oddfellows, and he was chosen Supreme Representative of the Oklahoma’s Grand Lodge of Knights of Pythias.

As a businessman born in Mississippi and brought up in eastern Texas, it was natural for Sawner to be aware of cotton as an investment, since cotton was the major cash crop of both regions as well as in Lincoln and Okfuskee Counties. Hannibal Johnson, a later historian, would refer to Lincoln County as “an oasis of tolerance” and Okfuskee contained Boley, the stellar success of the all-black towns in Oklahoma at the time of statehood (Boley endures to this day), so conditions in that part of the state may have been practical for a “person of color” like Sawner. Johnson in fact wrote a book about the Sawners of Chandler in which he attributes much of the tolerance in Chandler to the influence of people like Sawner and his wife Lena (104).

Now a lesson in basic geography. Lincoln County was part of Oklahoma (not Indian) Territory. By its position on a roadmap it may seem to belong more to the western plains than to the eastern cotton country, but throughout most of the decades here under consideration Lincoln was the second largest cotton growing county in the state. To understand this, the dividing line must be drawn correctly. Start at the extreme northeast corner of the state and pencil a diagonal line to its middle, then from there follow your straightedge due west to the border with the Texas panhandle. Or, just use the highways, follow the Will Rogers and Turner Turnpikes to Oklahoma City and go straight west on Interstate 40. The land to the north and

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west of these lines is Republican country. To the south and east is Little Dixie, the heart of what used to be Oklahoma’s Democratic Party (Goble 293). Much of Lincoln County is to the north and west, since the line runs right through the county seat of Chandler. To the southeast are Davenport, Clematis, and the Sac and Fox Agency, and across the county line is Indian Territory, including Okfuskee.

In 1910 the price of cotton, the state’s primary cash crop, was 5.8 cents a bale and would hover there for the next four years. Cotton prices had been slowly rising since 1896 and that year peaked at 8.7 cents per pound. Not good at all, but not as bad as they had been. Prices would continued to rise until they peaked at 10 cents in 1903 and 1905. Tenancy rates were also climbing: across the state the figure was 43.7 and would continue upward to hit 61.5 percent in 1930, but Sawner was a businessman, not a social reformer.

Sawner first comes to our attention in connection with cotton when a Chandler News item from January 1901 tells of him returning to Chandler from Guthrie and saying that “the cotton market in Chandler is the best he had seen.” In 1904 the Chandler Publicist reports him coming to the defense of a farmer who has sold his cotton on the street rather than settling for ten cents less on the market. Then the next year the News reports a comment of broader range:

W. W. F. Sawner is authority for the statement that the good prices for cotton in Oklahoma is principally due to the organization of farmers in the south. While the farmers are not banded closely here the effects of the organization where it is good can be felt even here.

I said Sawner was not a social reformer but here he shows 168

himself aware of the meliorative effects of organization-- i.e., of the many socialist farm organizations across the state which were making of Oklahoma at this period the strongest socialist entity among the states and territories.5

Much as it would be lovely to discuss the strength of the Socialist Party in Oklahoma during these years, writerly decorum demands that the focus remain on Sawner. His public contribution during the two decades from 1900 to 1920 was not only in helping farmers to sell their cotton but in radical issues as well. It should be noted that Sawner’s old legal firm, Twine, Saddler & Sawner, was the first firm of black attorneys in Guthrie, and said to be the first in Oklahoma. I don’t have figures for earlier years, but in 1913 the firm handled 2500 bales of cotton at a value of $175,000. In 1916 their aggregate business amounted to over $150,000, and about this time Sawner became Director of the Merchants Savings Bank at Boley. In 1920 he reached his pinnacle when he purchased a three-story office building in Muskogee for $30,000 cash.

If this rise from obscurity to wealth and prominence seems exceptional, we might turn our attention to another “mulatto” cotton buyer around Boley whose career was parallel to Sawner’s. This is Hilliard Taylor (1849-1913), buried in Olivewood, the historic black cemetery in Houston. Though born a slave, in 1871 he became a Houston leader under Reconstruction government. In 1892 Taylor began working for the firm of Theodore Keller, a merchant who owned a large wholesale grocer business as well as a cotton operation in Houston. In twelve years he

5. See Jim Bissett, Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904-1920 (Oklahoma UP, 1999); and Garin Burbank, When Farmers Voted Red: The Gospel of

Socialism in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1910-1924 (Greenwood Press, 1977).

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had acquired an extensive knowledge of the cotton business, and in 1904 he moved to Boley, Oklahoma, where he became one of the most prosperous cotton merchants in the state. He owned the Hilliard Taylor Gin Company and two cotton gins. He was President of the Boley Commercial Club, a stockholder in the Boley Light and Power Company, and a member of the Boley City Council. Taylor died in Boley but his remains were shipped back to Houston and buried in the now famous Olivewood alongside his wife Emma. He had purchased her plot for $65.00.

Since wealth in this early period was land, most of Sawner’s early legal cases would have involved the clearing of titles. But just as Twine started his own newspaper and fought the Klu Klux Klan, visiting the President in Washington to protest segregationist provisions in the new state’s proposed constitution, Sawner handled what would now be called Civil Rights cases in his law practice. On the political front, he attended the Oklahoma City Bar Association, and in Topeka he met with the National Association of Colored Businessmen, presided over by Booker T. Washington. During the years 1906-1907 he was on the executive committee of the Inter-Territorial Negro League Convention, addressing meetings of “colored Republicans” around the prospective state. He served as Chairman of the “colored delegates” to the state constitutional convention and as delegate-at-large among the whites at the convention. And he joined Twine in protesting the proposed segregationist constitution.

Sawner grew prosperous as a cotton broker, buying and selling cotton. It may have been about this time that he and his wife bought a fine home on Iowa Street. His

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Sawner home, Chandler, 1924

pinnacle of wealth, however, was reached in 1920 when he purchased an office building in Muskogee for $30,000
cash, a dramatic story that was carried by newspapers around the state and the country. One tribute published after his death describes him

operating gins at Boley, Muskogee and Redbird. Aside from his personal business he always found time to identify himself with every race movement and effort in the state and nation. He was appointed a member of the Oklahoma Commission on Inter- Racial Co-operation, vice-president of the farmers and Merchants bank at Boley, life member of the National Business League and director of the Southwestern Realty and Investment Company of Muskogee.

His greatest recognitions came posthumously. The day following his death in Chandler on May 1,1924, Oklahoma’s finest black newspaper, The Black Dispatch of

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Oklahoma City, ran two pages of commemorative articles from friends, and there for the first time public mention is made of personal incidents from his Mississippi and Texas years, of the kind noted in the earlier pages of the present essay (though still with no mention of his father’s name).

The most important celebration of his life came in a 46-page pamphlet published in the Chandler News- Publicist. Dated May 2, it begins as follows:

Citizens, regardless of color, turned out in masse today to do honor to the late Hon. G. W. F. Sawner, who passed away in his home Thursday evening, as a result of kidney trouble, that had affected him for some time. Early morning trains began to drop off delegations of race men from all sections of the state, and before the funeral services, which were held from the home, fully a hundred prominent Masons, Odd Fellows and Pythians, together with his immediate friends, had entered the city to join with his fellow townsmen in performing the last sad rite at the bier of one of Oklahoma’s most prominent and useful pioneers.

The lengthy pamphlet, full of songs, poetry, and tributes, constitutes a memorial and a monument that has never been matched in the history of Chandler before or since. Unlike the Mary Fry’s story referred to early in connection with Adrienne Rich, it contains no lies, but it maintains a certain secrecy and silence. Sawner’s true name remains unknown, as does that of his father.

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Sources

Print

Bissett, Jim. Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904-1920. Oklahoma UP, 1999.

“Blacks in Lincoln County Before and at Statehood.” Life and Times at Statehood, Lincoln County, O.T. Special edition of the Lincoln County News, published Chandler OK, Oct. 2007.

Bureau of the Census. Population of Oklahoma and Indian Territory, 1907. Bulletin 89

Burbank, Garin. When Farmers Voted Red: The Gospel of Socialism in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1910-1924. Greenwood Press, 1977.

Carney, George O. “Oklahoma’s All-Black Towns.” In African Americans on the Western Frontier. Ed. M. L. Billington and R. G. Hardaway. Boulder: Colorado UP, 1998, pp. 147-59.

Casey, Orben J. And Justice For All: The Legal Profession In Oklahoma, 1821–1989. Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Heritage Association, 1989.

Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes. 1941; Oklahoma UP and Princeton UP, 1972.

Goble, Danney. “The Southern Influence on Oklahoma.” In Joyce, pp. 280-301.

Green, James R. Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest 1895-1943 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana SUP, 1978).

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Johnson, Hannibal B. Acres of Aspiration: The All-Black Towns in Oklahoma. Eakin Press, no place, no date.

_____. The Sawners of Chandler: A Pioneering Power Couple in Pre-Civil Rights Oklahoma. Ft. Worth Texas: The Eakin Press, 2018.

Joyce, David D.“An Oklahoma I had Never Seen Before”: Alternative Views of Oklahoma History. Oklahoma UP, 1994.

Lincoln County Oklahoma History. Comp. and ed. by Lincoln County Historical Society. Claremore OK: Country Lane Press, 1988.

Shaw, James, Sr. Boley, Oklahoma’s Famous Black Town. Moore OK: Yes Publishing Group, 2012.

Tolson, Arthur. The Negro in Oklahoma Territory, 1889-1907. University of Oklahoma Dissertation, 1966.

Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South 1877-1913. Louisiana State UP, 1951.

Digital

“All-Black Towns,“ Oklahoma Encyclopedia of History and Culture. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/ encyclopedia/entries/A/AL009.html.

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digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/G/

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and Culture. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/

encyclopedia/entries/S/SO001.html
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Taylor 1849-1913.” The Texas Trailblazer Series, Texas Trailblazer Association of Houston, Texas, unpaginated pamphlet.

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enc/entry.php?entry=TW006. 

Sawner home, Chandler, 1924

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Print Sources

Bissett, Jim. Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904-1920. Oklahoma UP, 1999.

“Blacks in Lincoln County Before and at Statehood.”  Life and Times at Statehood, Lincoln County, O.T. Special edition of the Lincoln County News, published Chandler OK, Oct. 2007.

Bureau of the Census. Population of Oklahoma and Indian Territory, 1907. Bulletin 89

Burbank, Garin. When Farmers Voted Red: The Gospel of Socialism in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1910-1924. Greenwood Press, 1977.

Carney, George O. “Oklahoma’s All-Black Towns.” In African Americans on the Western Frontier. Ed. M. L. Billington and R. G. Hardaway. Boulder: Colorado UP, 1998, pp. 147-59.

Casey, Orben J. And Justice For All: The Legal Profession In Oklahoma, 1821–1989. Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Heritage Association, 1989.

Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes. 1941; Oklahoma UP and Princeton UP, 1972.

Goble, Danney. “The Southern Influence on Oklahoma.” In Joyce, pp. 280-301.

Green, James R. Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest 1895-1943 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana SUP, 1978).

Johnson, Hannibal B. Acres of Aspiration: The All-Black Towns in Oklahoma. Eakin Press, no place, no date.

Joyce, David D.“An Oklahoma I had Never Seen Before”: Alternative Views of Oklahoma History. Oklahoma UP, 1994.

Lincoln County Oklahoma History.  Comp. and ed. by Lincoln County Historical Society. Claremore OK: Country Lane Press, 1988. 

Shaw, James, Sr. Boley, Oklahoma’s Famous Black Town. Moore OK: Yes Publishing Group, 2012.

Tolson, Arthur. The Negro in Oklahoma Territory, 1889-1907. University of Oklahoma Dissertation, 1966.

Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South 1877-1913. Louisiana State UP, 1951.

Digital Sources

“All-Black Towns,“ Oklahoma Encyclopedia of History and Culture. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/A/AL009.html.

“Gore, Thomas Pryor,” Oklahoma Encyclopedia of History and Culture. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/G/GO013.html.

“Socialist Party,” Oklahoma Encyclopedia of History and Culture. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/S/SO001.html

Prather, Patricia Smith and Bernice McBeth, eds. “Hilliard Taylor 1849-1913.” The Texas Trailblazer Series, Texas Trailblazer Association of Houston, Texas, unpaginated pamphlet.

“Twine, William Henry.” Oklahoma Historical Society. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=TW006.