3 Comments

Excellent article. My great grandfather was born on the Cherokee rez and orphaned when whites killed his parents. He later married a Black woman from Utah and moved out of Oklahoma around the time of the Osage murders and things getting hot in Tulsa. He hid in the Black community in Utah so his kids weren't taken from him for the Indian board schools. A lot you have here is similar to stories I heard from my grandparents. Thanks for bringing this and more info to the light

Expand full comment

Good Read, thank you! I look forward to going through all your stories.

Nice mention about Bisbee AZ... I teach an AZ history class and one of the best/worst stories from that town is about a Labor Strike wherein the local law and "reputable businessmen" forcibly loaded up train-cars full of workers (who were striking due to insane mine work conditions) and shipped them out into the middle of the NM desert and left them there. 1917, wtf?!

Expand full comment

If all you ever accomplish is teaching even one self-styled opinionated journalist how to do real research, you will have succeeded. I lived in the Washington, D.C., suburbs in the pre-internet 1960s and learned to do research in libraries, archives, and the boring congressional sub-committee records - that's where the real work gets done. Today, if someone else hasn't already tied things up in pretty paper and a bow, i.e., a URL, few are able to do research.

Expand full comment