The last word

What do we know about Oklahoma history?

This is a story about education. And lack of same.

How embarrassing that I, a card-carrying citizen of the Cherokee Nation, did not know until I was well grown that many Indians won’t carry a $20 bill because of their hatred of Andrew Jackson.

One of my favorite high school teachers, Mrs. Richardson, lectured enthusiastically about Jackson. He was her idol — general, war hero (Battle of New Orleans), president of the United States. Also, I know now, thanks to the power of continued education, slave holder, Indian fighter and architect of Indian Removal, known to us here as the Trail of Tears.

Yes, Mrs. Richardson told me years later, she knew about Jackson’s faults and failures. “We didn’t teach like that then,” she explained.

Not quite the same as revisionist history. Which is what the Texas School Board was trying to do by rewriting history and social studies textbooks with a more conservative spin on politics and religion. Minimizing Thomas Jefferson because he advocated separation of church and state. Describing the slave trade as the Atlantic Triangular Trade.

How can this be? History’s history, isn’t it?

In a word, no.

Just ask both parties of a divorce.

I read in The Wall Street Journal about a major demographic shift coming down the pike. Perhaps as early as 2011 in this country, nonwhites will outnumber whites of European ancestry.

That means we white folks will suddenly become the minority. We’ll be “you people,” as in, “How do you people celebrate Christmas?” and “What do you people eat?”

My sister lives in Arizona and we seem to be trying to top one another to see whose state has or is trying to have the nuttiest, most intolerant attitudes toward immigration and racism.

If I were writing Oklahoma school history books, I would borrow heavily from a series published in 1980 by The University of Oklahoma Press — “Newcomers to a New Land.” This ethnic history of Oklahoma is a series of 10 little books so colorful and lively they rival any Hollywood epic. Each book focuses on one nationality of ethnic settlers to Oklahoma’s frontier — Czechs, Poles, Germans, Jews, Mexicans, Italians, British and Irish, blacks and the native settlers, American Indians.

The force behind the ethnic histories was Dr. Anne Morgan, who believes in the bones and sinews of history — history in full, real drama.

Dull history books, she says — only dates, battles, laws — are not the whole of history.

“That’s not what history is about,” she says. “History is the daily lives of ordinary people.”

The “Newcomers” series tells the personal stories of men and women of courage, determination and self-reliance. People who struggled in the raw land against incredible hardships and who triumphed because of an unswerving dedication to faith, family and work ethic.

The Russian-German immigrants were a people dedicated to three F’s — farming, faith and family. They smuggled hardy Russian wheat into the country sewn into the hems of the women’s long dresses and turned the prairie into the bread basket of the world.

The earliest Polish immigrants were a handful of coal miners in the McAlester area in 1876. Poles who later came to the state were the refugee priests who survived World War II’s holocaust. One of these was Father Kasimir Krutkowski, a political prisoner of the Third Reich and medical guinea pig at Dachau. Coincidentally, he was rescued by the Thunderbirds from Oklahoma’s 45th Infantry Division.

The Mexicans are described as Oklahoma’s “invisible minority,” vital to the state’s economic development. Between 1910 and the Depression, Mexican immigrants provided the majority of the work force for railroad crews and a significant part of coal mining labor.

Sometimes they “passed” for Indians and found work with government WPA projects. In school, one Mexican girl remembered, “They treated us like Negroes” — segregated and forced by Anglo children to walk in the street.

This spirited history series shows us the legacy immigrants to Oklahoma left to our keeping. It tells us what we owe foreigners.

The out-of-print books can be found on the Internet and in libraries.

“I have about 200 calls a year asking for copies,” Morgan says.

I hope OU Press reprints the series. I hope Oklahomans find it and read it.

This is my wish for education in Oklahoma.