How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [142]
Though Murray was a fellow vice president at the Sequoyah Convention, he privately doubted the effort would succeed. He was not alone. “There is not the faintest chance to get the Indian Territory admitted separately,” Idaho’s Daily Statesman asserted. “If it were necessary to create a state where Indians would exercise such great influence the experiment might be tried, but in this case it is not necessary and the country will never consent.” Murray, for his part, was not aiming to create an Indian state. His goal was to organize future voters in the Indian Territory in order to strengthen that constituency in the future state Murray anticipated—one that would combine the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory.4
“Alfalfa Bill” Murray (1869-1956) (photo credit 40.2)
The effort to create a state of Sequoyah was ultimately torpedoed by President Theodore Roosevelt. “I recommend that Indian Territory and Oklahoma be admitted as one state,” he had told Congress in his 1905 State of the Union message. That the boundaries of the Indian Territory would thereby be obliterated did not concern him. “There is no obligation,” he told Congress, “to treat territorial subdivisions, which are matters of convenience only.”
With the president endorsing a state that combined the two territories, the action moved to the Oklahoma statehood convention in Guthrie in 1906. At this venue, the delegates elected “Alfalfa Bill” as the convention president. Murray’s opening address praised Green McCurtain and the other chiefs as “great men,” then went on to paint the colors, as it were, of the state he foresaw. “We must provide the means for the advancement of the negro race, and accept him as God gave him to us and use him for the good of society,” he declared. “As a rule, they are failures as lawyers, doctors and in other professions. He must be taught in line with his own sphere as porters, bootblacks, and barbers.… It is an entirely false notion that the negro can rise to the equal state of a white man.”
While many states had enacted Jim Crow laws, Murray sought to embed white supremacy in the Oklahoma constitution. Other white delegates disagreed—not with Murray’s racial views, but with the political wisdom of including them in a constitution that would require approval by Congress and the signature of President Roosevelt. Ultimately, the delegates, including Murray, opted to avoid a confrontation. They contented themselves with a resolution stating “it is the sense of this body that separate coaches and waiting rooms be required for the negro race … [but] consider this a legislative matter rather than a constitutional question.”
Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907. On the legislature’s opening day, it enacted Senate Bill No. 1, mandating segregated railroad coaches and waiting rooms as its first order of business.
In thus privileging white people, Oklahoma faced the issue of its red people, whose political support was essential, given the state’s demographics. Anticipating this need, the Oklahoma constitution included a section devoted to the definition of race. “Wherever in this Constitution and laws of this state, the word or words, ‘colored,’ ‘colored race,’ ‘negro,’ or ‘negro race’ are used,” Article 23 stated, “the same shall be construed to mean or apply to all persons of African descent. The term ‘white race’ shall include all other persons.” Legally speaking, American Indians were now white people in Oklahoma.
Edward P. McCabe was one of several thousand African Americans who had migrated to Oklahoma since the 1890s. Most of these settlers were from the South, seeking economic opportunity and escape from persecution. Unfortunately for them, many poor Southern whites (such as Murray) had also migrated to Oklahoma for economic opportunity.
Compared to Murray, McCabe came from an economically advantaged background.