A Very OK Podcast
Episode 51: “The 1920 Election”
October 21, 2025
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. With me as always is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it’s great to see you again as maybe fall is starting to sort of make its way into Oklahoma.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Well, it is beautiful out, and I, and you actually look different than you normally do. You must have been somewhere or done something that changed your latitude and attitude.
Thompson: Yeah, I definitely want to talk about that a little bit. But first, I want to bring our guest into the podcast we have with us Dr. Sunu Kodumthara, who is professor of history at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. If you have been a long-time listener of the podcast, you know sinew from being our guest in the “Votes for Women” episode where we talked about women’s suffrage, and that was such a great episode. So Sunu, I am so glad to have you with us today.
Dr. Sunu Kodumthara: I’m glad to be back. It’s been a long time, so it’s always good to see you guys and good to have a conversation about history.
Thompson: Yeah, well, in many cases we’ll be picking up where we left off on that last women’s suffrage podcast, so I’m excited about that. But yes, Bob, getting back to what you were talking about, I recently returned from a trip to China, and it was an honor for me to go over there. I was invited by the Gansu province, the Foreign Affairs office there, to go over there and help commemorate the 40th anniversary of our sister state and province relationship with the Gansu province. And, they, they sent a delegation over here in May, and I had the honor of giving them a tour of the State Capitol. And I guess they liked their tour well enough that they decided to invite me over there. And I spent a week. We flew into the city of Dunhuang, which is, first of all, the Gansu province is way out there. It is not, it’s not on the east coast, sort of north central or northwest China. And Dunhuang was a stop on the ancient Silk Road trading route. And we had an opportunity to, attend the 8th Silk Road International Cultural Expo there, which brought people together from many different countries. We went out into the Gobi Desert and rode camels, which was a first for me. I enjoyed that quite a bit, although there was a little bit of a sandstorm the day that we were there. And we toured the Mogao Caves, which, folks, if you ever have a chance to do this, it is so well worth it. These are caves that were carved into a mountain by Buddhist travelers starting in the three hundreds, and then they decorated the caves with all of this beautiful Buddhist art. This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it has been preserved throughout the years. These caves are 1,500 years old now or more, and it’s been preserved because of the climate out there in the desert. So it’s one of the neatest things I got to see. And then we traveled over to the lot to Lanzhou, which is the capital city of the Gansu province, and at the provincial museum there, which was an incredible museum with, you know, when they’re showing you artifacts there, Bob, from that are 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 years old, I thought about our artifacts, which are slightly, slightly newer than that. But, we also had a ceremony there to commemorate the anniversary. And at that ceremony, they were showing video of George Nigh and Donna Nigh riding camels in the desert, just like we did. And we got to commemorate that.
And then they put together a photo exhibit consisting of photos from the past 40 years that talked about this relationship and how we have engaged in cultural exchange, everything from business to medicine to the economy. And that was really, really special, and especially with George Nigh having passed away recently, just thinking about him and his memory and thinking, I bet he would be proud of us for being over here and for doing this and continuing this legacy. And I was personally gratified because about 30 of my own personal photos were put in the exhibit of different Oklahoma landscapes and scenes from across the state. So, for a couple more weeks, my photos will be on exhibit while that while that exhibit is still going on at the museum. And then we got to go to George Nigh’s friendship tree, and that’s the tree he planted in 1985 when he was there at a park in Lanzhou. And so it was very, it was wonderful trip. I was on the trip with Kyle Dillingham and his band, Horseshoe Road, which Kyle’s been going to Gansu for 10 years now. And he is such a wonderful ambassador for Oklahoma and such a, he’s so good at making connections with the Chinese people. It was just really nice to see the type of work he does upfront or up close. And then we also had eight UCO students with us on the trip, who were music students and their professor, Dr. Danielle Harrington, who is an opera singer. And boy, she can sing. She’s incredible. She sang at George Nigh’s funeral. I don’t know if you remember that. And the students were so wonderful. You know, Sunu, I know you live in college student world, but when I found out I was going to be traveling with eight college students, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
Kodumthara: A little nervous.
Thompson: And a little bit nervous for sure, but they were so professional. They were polite. They were, of course, some of them were singers. Some of them played instruments, but they were all just such a good representation of our state. And it made me so proud to be with a group of students who were so good at representing not only UCO but the state of Oklahoma. And it was, it was a trip that I will never forget. And I felt very, very honored and privileged to be a part of it.
Blackburn: Well, you should. And that reminds me of, of course, of George Nigh, who always reached out to other people and like one of my heroes in popular culture, Rick Steves, he always says we need to go beyond politics and what governments may be arguing about and get to know the people. I’ll never forget I was giving a speech one year for town hall, and Rick Steves was there the night before me. I had dinner, and he gave a speech about how we should reach out to the Iranian people. Yeah, we have problems with Iran, you know, political issues, but the Iranian people like Americans. So if you get to know them, you like, you said, we got to we got to do better than just let governments tell us who the enemy are, with quote marks around it, and really get to know people. And we have more in common than we think oftentimes. And you experienced that. That’s good.
Thompson: Yeah, you’re exactly right. And when you’re traveling through a foreign country like that, you see people that are going about their lives, they’re families raising children, they’re people running their businesses. They’re trying to give the next generation a better life, just like we’re trying to do here. And, in many cases, perhaps we shouldn’t hold the people responsible for some of the things that their government does because, just like here, we don’t have all the control over the things that our government does. And, it’s the same way over there. I found the people that I met both, you know, the official, the official people that we dealt with from the government, but also the people that you would just run into in the stores and in the shops and and in the restaurants just to be incredibly nice. Incredibly outgoing. They were very forgiving of the fact that we spoke zero Mandarin. And I will say Google Translate and Google Lens were very, very important to us on this trip, even though we had, we had translators along the way reading the signs, you know, in the museum. I like to read a good plaque, you know.
Kodumthara: Same.
Thompson: And, I couldn’t read them. So I would hold up my Google Lens and get the translation so I could read it. I will say one thing funny that happened with translation. There were several things. But when we were in the Mogao Caves, one of the, there’s over 470 caves with this Buddhist art that was carved over a thousand years, and one of the caves is the most prominent. It has a statue of Buddha in it that was probably 40 or 50 feet tall. It’s massive. You walk in, and you’re as big as Buddha’s foot is. And I asked our translator, I said, how long would this have taken to build this statue in here? And she said, oh, probably about 12 hours. And I was kind of confused, and she saw the confused look on my face. And then she said, oh no, no, no, wait, 12 years, 12 years. (laughter)
Blackburn: Something lost in translation.
Thompson: Yeah.
Kodumthara: Twelve hours is extremely efficient.
Thompson: I just thought those are some people who could build a statue.
Blackburn: The Chinese had 3D printing very early on.
Thompson: But I will say their English was much, much, much, much, much better than my Chinese was. So, but, a lot of fun, and a good trip, and just such a great learning experience for me. And I hope I get to come back, go back again because it was such a rewarding time. So, a big thank you to our folks, over there in, in the Gansu province for for showing us a little bit of their country, and helping us to understand them. And, I hope they get to come back too.
Kodumthara: Yeah, that would be amazing.
Thompson: Well, I suppose we should jump into our topic this week because we have a really, I think, a really exciting topic to talk about this time. And it’s the 1920 election in Oklahoma and, Sunu, when you were here last, we talked about women’s suffrage, and women had gotten the right to vote, but we didn’t have time really to get into that 1920 election, which is the first election that women can vote in.
Kodumthara: Right.
Thompson: And this election turns the tables in so many ways. It’s the first election where Republicans take the Oklahoma House of Representatives. It’s the first elections where two women are elected to the legislature. It is an election in which a senator, a US senator, who had held the office since statehood, was turned out in favor of a Republican. And so many things were going on. And it was such a tumultuous time after World War I, that I thought we should really devote some time just to talking about this.
Kodumthara: You know, and Bob can talk about this as well. But I think if you look at this from a national lens, the whole country is going through a lot of political upheaval at this point, because keep in mind, we’ve spent the first 20 years of this century going through Progressive Era politics, where everything has changed, change, change, hold everybody accountable, whether it’s politicians or corporate America. Then you have World War I, and World War I is something that no one had been planning for, expecting, even though the signs were always there. And it is a traumatic event. Right? And let’s not forget the Spanish flu that starts in Kansas. So there’s all of this tumult, and there’s all of this chaos, and Republicans actually see this as an opportunity, a political opportunity for themselves because, quite frankly, with the death of Theodore Roosevelt, which is in 1919, there is no real heir to a Progressive Era–politician. Right? If there were, it’d be Theodore Roosevelt, because he had resurrected himself from the dead. There’s really no nobody else.
Thompson: Yeah.
Kodumthara: And so Republicans see this as an opportunity for themselves to sort of reinvent who they are as a party and figure out, okay, let’s reclaim this as, as an opportunity for us as a party and as leaders. Let’s find out who can take the lead now. As for Democrats, you’ve got Woodrow Wilson, who secretly wants a third term because he can’t believe that nobody really loves him. And then there’s, there is a lot of division within their party as well. And so because of that, it’s an excellent opportunity for Republicans everywhere across that country. And that includes Oklahoma, where it’s a disaster to be a Republican up until this point.
Thompson: Right.
Kodumthara: So yeah.
Thompson: Bob, can you give us a sense, you know, after World War I and leading into the 1920s, what are we experiencing not only as a state and a country when we’re talking about our economy, the labor movement, agriculture, which was so important to the state of Oklahoma, oil production? What are we facing?
Blackburn: We’re really, this was a watershed period in Oklahoma history as well as American history, and I would say that it’s close to the 1950s and 1960s. So a lot of us Baby Boomers who were, you know, growing up in the 1960s with all of the division in America and the Nixon versus the, you know, the hippies, and you go on and on with all the dramatic tension. You kind of get a little bit of this at that time. And it started earlier, of course. Most movements in American history and Oklahoma history evolve. Nothing happens overnight. But typically wartime and dramatic events like that will focus change. And that’s what happened during World War I. So some of the things that have been happening is that we’re making a transition from a largely rural state. Agricultural-based farmers and ranchers are making the decisions. They’re driving the economy, mainly a male community at the time. And that begins to change. The first big oil strike, 1905, followed by a series of strikes elsewhere throughout the state. So oil wealth is coming in, bringing people in from the Mid-Atlantic, not your old populist agrarians who came from Kansas and Illinois and Missouri or Texas. Here you’re getting it a little different. So politics is changing, reflecting the changes in the economy, going to more of an urban. Oklahoma City goes from 10,000 people in 1900 to 64,000 people by 1910 and keeps growing. And so you get the growth of Oklahoma City. Tulsa becomes “the Oil Capital of the World” during these days and will emerge in the 1920s as a dominant city within the oil patch in the country. Oklahoma, one of the top three leading oil–producing states in the country. Well, that’s bringing in new wealth. The railroads have built and connected all these little communities that had been isolated for the first decade, some in some cases, first two decades of settlement. Suddenly here come the railroads connecting. You get social changes, like the movies are coming. Suddenly, every little town has a movie theater. So you’re seeing what people in New York City are thinking, and seems alien. You get a time when it’s William Jennings Bryan and the Populist Movement, very fundamentalist religion is exploding around the country versus a Theodore Roosevelt, who was almost a secular kind of a leader and a progressive in his own way. But these divisions within our community are evolving and changing, and things are speeding up in these, in these decades. So women voting, with the war concentrating all the changes, the racism that was here in the very beginning, flares, no accident that across the country you have the race riots and race wars of 1919, 1920. And then, of course, in Tulsa, 1921 is an outgrowth of all of this change. People expecting something better than what they’ve had before. African Americans are expecting something better. Women are expecting something better. Farmers and ranchers are expecting the good times that they’ve had since 1898 to continue, and it’s not. Then you have the growing middle class in the towns who are wanting their own voice. And then you get the war and the political factionalism that starts even within the Democratic Party. So you still have the William Jennings Bryan pacifists, isolationists who don’t want to get involved. “America First” would be you know, their motto at that time, as it is today among some. And they are saying, no, we need to stay out of the war. Then Woodrow Wilson kind of sees the reasons to get involved, and there were good reasons to get involved. But yet they’re still the isolationists, like Senator Gore and Oklahoma, one of the few senators to vote against entering World War I. And yet here in Oklahoma, where we have a warrior society among American Indians especially, African Americans would join the armed services in greater numbers than the white population. And then, you know, this was a very physical, male dominated society, militant. Let’s go fight. Let’s go kill. You know, the idea of a good time on a Saturday night, get drunk and get in a fight. Today, we don’t, we don’t quite think that. There may be a few who still do, but typically not. But at that time, that was a dominant culture. So yeah, let’s get in there. Let’s fight and win this war. And then the pacifists, so once the Democrats split on that issue and the Socialist Party that had been persecuted during the war as anti-American, and you see new laws passed to try to suppress freedom of speech, putting people in jail without due cause in clamping down on the Labor Movement. Then the war ends and labor says, now we need our fair share. So you get a series of strikes. You still have the anti-labor movement, very strong. And you get all this churning at the very same time when the Democratic Party is split, and it provides that opening. And we have to remember too, that even though Republicans had not won many statewide elections or any statewide elections at that time, the Republicans always were just a little under the Democrats. It was not a vast majority.
Thompson: That’s right.
Blackburn: The Republicans would do pretty well. But just enough Democrats, especially in eastern Oklahoma and the land of the Five Tribes, where almost everyone was a Democrat, could outvote the Republicans in the Cherokee Outlet and Republicans in Tulsa and the Republicans in Oklahoma City. And what changed in 1920 is that the farmers and ranchers that had been voting a populist kind of Democratic ticket up to this point start splitting their vote. And so the hardcore Republicans are still going to vote the way they are. Hardcore Democrats are going to vote. But you split some of that rural vote, and it tips it the other direction.
Thompson: Sunu, I don’t think that that people really understand how much the League of Nations and this whole idea of creating the League of Nations really did hurt the Democratic Party here in Oklahoma. You know, there was this idea of we have to stick with Wilson. We have to, everything that Wilson is saying is what we have to abide by, and if Wilson’s going down the road of the League of Nations, and we’re going to go down. But I think it’s a classic case of Wilson leading a parade and then looking back behind him going, not many people were backers.
Kodumthara: That’s absolutely right.
Thompson: And the Democrats had a tough job here in Oklahoma to try and convince people like, no, we got to do this League of Nations thing. I think people did not want to buy it.
Kodumthara: That’s right. I mean, you know, with Woodrow Wilson, his struggle is trying to maintain a connection not just to the Democratic Party, but to the American people in general. Right? And so I think he had convinced himself primarily that wherever I go, the people will follow because I’m the smartest one in the room, whatever. And if that’s what Wilson said, whatever Wilson believed, good for him. But a part of the problem, though, is that when you spend that many months in France negotiating these treaties and you’re disconnected from what’s going on in the United States and the country, as Bob points out, there is so much going on in the country that he’s left behind while he’s negotiating this treaty. And it’s not great for Wilson anyway while he’s negotiating the treaty. Right? Things aren’t going great for him. So when he comes back and he realizes that Congress doesn’t agree with him, I think he just chalks that up to, well, this is just Republicans being angry with me, and Republicans disagreeing with me, and he doesn’t quite realize that the American people don’t want to engage in what they are now describing as a European war.
Thompson: I think too, and this is not to denigrate all three people sitting in this room. Wilson was an academic.
Kodumthara: I just came out of, like I told a friend of mine this morning, I said, academics are the worst, and I fully embrace that as an academic. Academics really are the worst. We are. I’m so sorry.
Thompson: I think what Wilson really thought, when I, when I explain this to everybody, everybody’s going to say, “That makes a lot of sense, and they’re going to buy into this.”
Kodumthara: Yes.
Thompson: And I think, I don’t think Wilson understood that he couldn’t explain this away.
Kodumthara: No. And this is a part of the problem with being an academic is that we have a very specific way of understanding things and reading things and then communicating those things is very difficult, because if you only see things from a very narrow point of view, then trying to explain that to a broader audience is almost impossible. Trying to sell his 14 points, for example, to the British, the French, and the Italians, they weren’t going to buy it. So how was he going to sell the League of Nations to an American public who had no interest whatsoever in participating in an international body? They didn’t want anything to do with anything international at that point.
Blackburn: You know, one thing that you’ve just reminded me of, really what he was doing was his ideology. He was an idealist in a lot of ways, and ideologues tend to see it only one way. And you get a lot of ideologues in American history coming out of World War I. And so you, the Eugene V. Debs, you know, Labor Movement and Socialist, and you see others, and everyone’s coming up with their own ideological. And then you get the evangelicals again, just as today, that’s part of this mix. You know, some people want, you know, Christian nationalism. They want a theocracy running the country. Well, at that time, some of the old followers, and you still see it with the Scopes trial trying to deny evolution. Just as today you say, let’s deny that vaccines really work. And when there is so much proof that they do, but ideologues will plow through that and not believe it, and they don’t listen. And so when you get a lot of different factions all moving at the same time, not listening, ideologues following their own path, it’s easy for things to break down. And that’s what was really happening at the time.
Kodumthara: Yeah.
Thompson: Well, where the big fracture occurs and Bob, you mentioned it just a couple of minutes ago, was in the Thomas Gore Senate seat, and Gore had been elected since statehood. You know, remember we talked about in our Robert Owen episode, there was an agreement that there would be one senator elected from old the Indian Territory, one senator elected from old Oklahoma Territory, east and west. And so, Gore wins the western, the western seat. He was from Lawton at the time. And it really when it came to World War I, he did not think the United States should be involved in the war. He did not support many of Wilson’s policies during the war. He felt like the League of Nations would bind the US to future wars, and he wasn’t willing to go along with that. And then he also called for voting down the Treaty of Versailles. So, Oklahoma Democrats said, what good is this guy? He’s not supporting, you know, today it’s a little bit different. We have the parties, but there’s not, I feel like there’s the party devotion isn’t maybe as fervent in some areas. I could be wrong about that. But back then, if you didn’t toe the party line, then you, at the convention, you know, you had to, it was pretty rough sledding. And when they got to the Democratic convention at the at the state level, they censured him.
Kodumthara: Right.
Thompson: And the newspapers throughout the state, especially those that were Democratic newspapers, they filleted him. It was not pretty.
Kodumthara: Yeah. I mean, here’s the thing that I don’t think a lot of people know about Wilson at the time of his leadership of the Democratic Party. And a friend of mine and I were talking about it just before I came over. And that is Wilson has a sort of leadership over the party to where there are people who are completely devoted to Wilson’s leadership and vision. So whatever Wilson believed, whatever Wilson wanted, that’s what was going to happen. And that’s what they were going to support 100%. So the idea that a Democrat would dare to voice an opinion that was different from Wilson was sacrilege. It was considered a betrayal to the party. So a betrayal to Wilson was a betrayal to the Democratic Party. And of course, this was very problematic and would ultimately cost the Democratic Party. Right? But at that time, that’s the kind of control, I guess, is the word I would use here. But that’s the kind of control that Wilson had over the Democratic Party at that, at least at that moment.
Blackburn: And there’s an emotional element here, too. Everything is more dramatic. We’ve seen that in the last couple of years in American history. Everything is so dramatic. You know, people ready to fight over, you know, a few words. But it was the same then. And an example of that coming out of World War I were the councils of defense that were not government related, but they were voluntary organizations by county, councils of defense to ensure patriotism. So if we’re going to fight this war, everyone is going to be patriotic. And if you voiced an opinion, your house might be burned down, you might be lynched. There were white people being lynched in World War I in Oklahoma because they weren’t fervent enough in their support of the war. So you get that emotion during those war years, and you don’t turn that off overnight. So basically, you’re almost honoring vigilante justice.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: And the vigilante justice carries over into the postwar years. I’ve always thought that that was a big part of the Tulsa Race Massacre. You still have a lot of these people thinking vigilante justice is good, and these young Black men have come over into the “white section of town.” We got to punish them, and we have to take justice into our own hand. That was the emotion of that time. So things are emotional, polarized, and it was so much in flux. It creates an opportunity for the Republican Party.
Thompson: Well, I went on The Gateway to Oklahoma History, which is a fantastic resource.
Kodumthara: A treasure trove.
Thompson: Diving into old newspaper articles amongst, you can look up all kinds of other things as well. These are a few of the editorials that I found about Thomas Gore. This is the Daily Oklahoman. “When the history of these Times is written, it will have to record that Senator Gore of Oklahoma was never caught standing by the president.” That was a tame one.
Blackburn: And always, why you get that in political.
Thompson: Another one. And this is from Renfrew’s Record out of Alva, which was a Democratic newspaper. “Had Germany won, you would have won.”
Kodumthara: Oh, wow.
Thompson: Talking about Senator Gore. ”Germany lost, And when the kaiser abdicated, he might well have taken your Senatorial seat and placed it by the side of his wood pile.” Oh, the Daily Oklahoman also published a front page editorial in which they alleged that the German kaiser would have voted the same way in which Gore voted on a series of war time bills and amendments. So folks, I mean, this is like, goodness, this is not just, hey, we don’t like some of the policy decisions. They’re equating him with being in league with the enemy.
Kodumthara: Yeah. Wow. That’s fun.
Thompson: As Johnny Cash would say, ”Weird, wild stuff.”
Kodumthara: That’s good.
Thompson: Or maybe Dana Carvey’s impression.
Blackburn: Either one will work.
Thompson: So the person who runs against Gore is Scott Ferris. Ferris had served in the Oklahoma, or I’m sorry, in the US House of Representatives from statehood, 1907, all the way from 1921. And he unseats Gore, and he does it, he does it pretty handily, 106,000 to 80,000 votes. So it’s not even a close election. And once again, you would think it’s an incumbent senator that it would be a dog fight, but it wasn’t a dog fight at all. The person who runs for the Republican nomination and gets it is John Harreld, who was an oil man, an attorney. He had run for an unexpired seat and won that in 1919. So he was still, he had been involved in politics, but he was new to elected politics. He ends up getting the nomination. Well, the people when the election comes, the socialists are disaffected and they, they end up swinging to the Republicans, which is hard to believe, but that’s what actually happens. There were Democrats who were loyal to Gore, who either sat the election out or who decided to vote for the Republican candidate. And so by the time that it’s all said and done, Gore loses the election, and he loses it pretty handily. The, he gets 25 rural counties, but it’s really. Harreld runs away with the urban areas and with the rest of the state. And so this is the big, this is the big election where, that really showed the weakness of the Democrats in this particular year.
Kodumthara: Yeah. And I, I think I should also add here, and I’m sure you were going to add, you know, say this, but I’m going to steal your thunder. This is also the first election where Oklahoma votes for a Republican president, And this is unheard of for Oklahoma as a typically Democratic state. When I say Democratic, I want to emphasize here that we tend to go Southern Democrat at this point. Right? But voting for a guy like Warren G. Harding, who is very much a compromise candidate for the Republicans, that does not make sense for Oklahoma. But in 1920, it does. Right? Because it just, that’s the opportunity for Republicans, and he’s that opportune candidate. And so yeah, the fact that there, Oklahoma’s going to lean Republican that way and then send in a Republican senator on the state’s behalf is eye opening.
Blackburn: I think it’s pretty revealing too that Harding’s, you know, statement, return to normalcy, you know, wanting to get away from the contentious politics of the war years and get away from the social divides between evolution and, and and, you know, higher education academy. And I think a lot of people are responsive to that. Hey, let’s calm down. Let’s get back to, you know, just making sure we have food on the table and some money in the pocket.
Kodumthara: Yeah.
Thompson: I mean, was there ever a better slogan for that particular time in history? Because that is what people wanted to get back to. They wanted, after going through a world war, after, you know, commodity prices, wheat, cattle, agriculture was in the toilet and it was because, you know, we had ramped up production to help cover the needs of the world during World War I, when so much of Europe was offline. Farmers had bought land on credit. And now commodity prices were coming way down because Europe was getting back online. And so this idea of returning to normalcy, boy, that must have been so comforting.
Kodumthara: Right. And, you know, Republicans also push this idea that Americans were suffering from what they described as moral fatigue, and that embraces all sorts of ideas. We were tired of doing the right thing when it came to progressivism, but we were also tired of being the world’s superheroes when it came to democracy, which is what Wilson wanted the Americans to be. And now it was just time for us to sit and be and live our lives and do what we can with what we had and as you pointed out, Bob, just to be able to feed ourselves and get by and succeed as best as possible, that was the goal.
Thompson: We have to remember too. Oklahoma had ten electoral votes. We had eight congressmen and two senators, so that that was ten electoral votes. So that made Oklahoma not nothing when it came to campaigning. And so, before we jump into the presidential race for just a minute, I do want to close the book on Gore for just a second. He was fairly magnanimous in his defeat. And he said, ”As for my defeat, I prefer to spend time in remembering what the people of Oklahoma have done for me, rather than what they have done to me. Out of office, as in office, I shall cherish no other ambition than to serve my state and country.” That’s a letter he wrote in March of 1921 to his constituents. And it would not be the end for Gore. He would be reelected to the United States Senate in 1930, so he would have a political resurrection after a few years in the private sector. So with that, let’s take a quick break and we’ll be right back.
Announcer: Mark your calendars for two big events happening in November at Honey Springs Battlefield and the Oklahoma History Center. The biennial Battle of Honey Springs is November 8 and 9 at Honey Springs Battlefield in Checotah. Guests can take self-guided tours through the Union, Confederate, and civilian camps while learning about life during the Civil War. There will be military drills, demonstrations, and so much more. The reenactment of the battle takes place at 1 p.m. on November 8 and 9. The Battle of Honey Springs was the largest Civil War battle to take place in Indian Territory. And on November 15, Join the OHS to celebrate 20 years of the Oklahoma History Center. this free community celebration will feature special programing, including hands-on activities, guided tours, and historical interpreters. The celebration will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on November 15. For more information about these events and others, visit okhistory.org/events.
Thompson: Welcome back. We’re talking about the 1920 election in Oklahoma. We’re going to talk about the presidential election that Sunu just mentioned. This election pitted James Cox, who had been governor of Ohio, against Warren Harding and, who had also been involved in politics in Ohio. If I have my notes here correctly, he was elected to the US Senate in 1914 and then served as in state capacity in the Ohio Senate and also served as lieutenant governor. Nobody in the world thought Warren Harding would come out of the maelstrom as the Republican nominee.
Kodumthara: Least of all Warren Harding. To be fair, let’s just be honest there. Warren Harding did not know that he would come out of this as the candidate. I think it well, for him, it took ten ballots to become the Republican nominee, and he wasn’t supposed to be. I think it was supposed to be Calvin Coolidge, because that’s who the people wanted. But the party wanted Warren G. Harding. Harding’s the guy who could be easily manipulated and controlled, quite frankly, by the party. And, you know, while he was in Senate, he didn’t really do anything. I mean, he showed up every once in a while and voted the way he was told to vote, and he was a newspaperman. He knew the right people. He was connected with the right people. And Calvin Coolidge, on the other hand, was a man who knew his mind. He knew his politics. And so he had to settle for being the vice president. And so, Harding was a guy who, you know, just wanted to if he was going to be in office, he’ll just sit in office and not do a whole lot more than that, which is what the American people wanted at that time.
Thompson: Well, interestingly enough, one of the men who helped Harding get the nomination was a man from Ardmore named Jake Hamon. And at some point, I want to do an entire episode just on him, because he lived a very wild and scandalous life.
Kodumthara: As did Warren G. Harding.
Thompson: Yes, as did Warren G. Harding, which we find out a little bit later on.
Blackburn: Oklahoma connections there.
Thompson: But Jake Hamon helps arrange, he kind of puts the pieces together for this to happen. And some of the ways that Jake Hamon in arranges for this directly leads to the Teapot Dome scandal, which will impact Harding’s life, which there’s a great series of episodes on the ”American Scandal” podcast about this whole episode, which you should go and check out if you ever have a chance to do that. But, James Cox was the presidential nominee. Now Cox excited nobody. And Cox was sort of the dutiful warrior to try to keep on Woodrow Wilson’s policies. But nobody, once again, we’re talking the League of Nations was a dud, and carrying this on was a nonstarter. The American people, as Bob mentioned, were ready for something different, and they turned their attention. Now, the, the good thing about the Cox candidacy was his vice-presidential running mate. And that was, a little known fellow who was assistant secretary of the Navy named Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And so that would set up Roosevelt for future political success, as we’re all aware of. But, ultimately, Warren Harding would win, and it wouldn’t even be close. He won by a vote of 60% of the popular vote to 34% of the popular vote to Cox, 404 electoral votes to 127 electoral votes. And he got Oklahoma’s ten electoral votes. As Sunu mentioned, the first Republican to be voted to be voted in by Oklahoma since statehood in 1907. Also, fun fact Cox started a string of newspapers in Ohio that later became the, media empire of, what we now know as Cox Communications.
Kodumthara: Is that right? So when you pay your rent, when you pay your Cox cable bill, you can think back to the Democratic presidential nominee for 1920, because he’s the guy who started it all.
Kodumthara: And this is why history matters, folks.
Thompson: That’s exactly right.
Blackburn: Well, and if he had, won the election, we might be paying our bills to Harding Communications.
Thompson: That’s right.
Blackburn: Someone was going to do it.
Thompson: Someone would. That’s right for sure. So that’s the presidential election in Oklahoma. And, let’s jump into, we have some, Alice Robertson, the first female elected to Congress from Oklahoma. And she would hold that title all the way until the 21st century, when Mary Fallin is elected to Congress. She would also be the first person to, first Republican to be elected from the second district. Yeah, and that would be the case all the way until Tom Coburn is elected in the mid 1990s. So, you know, it’s, she’s blazing some ground there and I know, Sunu, you’ve done quite a bit of research into Alice Robertson and, you want to tell us a little bit about her?
Kodumthara: Alice Robertson is a fascinating, fascinating woman. So she and her family have a long history of working among Native Americans in terms of education. Her parents were missionaries. She and her sister have been raised to sort of, work, as you know, missionaries and educators and that sort of thing. And then, of course, as she got older, she started getting involved more in, causes to help, quote unquote, save, Native peoples, which is how she met people like Theodore Roosevelt and others. She would, because of her friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, become involved as the postmaster of Muskogee, and she had really prominent positions. But I think what makes her unique here is that she would also serve as the vice president of the Oklahoma Anti-Suffrage Association. And so she actively campaigned against the woman’s right to vote, which is why I find her so fascinating, because she was then approached about running for office after Oklahoma women were granted the right to vote. And she, you know, for all of her campaigning against the right to vote, saying that women were incapable of voting or should not have the right to vote, she was really well-versed in Oklahoma politics. And she immediately said, to the Republican Party. She said, listen, you know, this is not a Republican district. I have no chance of winning here. This is, this is a Democratic stronghold. But she’s also someone who was a savvy businesswoman. She was popular locally. People really liked her. They were drawn to her. She was in her early 60s at that point. And she used her restaurant and ads in the newspapers to help her campaign. And that’s what sends her into Congress. It’s not some really savvy political campaign. It’s just her being herself. And that’s what makes her our first congresswoman.
Thompson: Bob, what are your thoughts on Alice Robertson?
Blackburn: She’s always fascinated me, and Kate Barnard is the same. Yeah. I mean, against women having the right to vote.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: You had two of our most prominent women in the first part of the 20th century, but Alice fascinates me because she was a business person as well. Of course, I’ve always been drawn to free enterprise and the story of it. Well, she not only had the restaurant, she had a photo gallery, took probably thousands of photographs of people in the area. And so kind of like Dr. Coburn later, who delivered a lot of babies, she took photographs of a lot of babies. And so she had that connection with the people, and she was sympathetic to American Indian traditions and preserving way of life. Her collections, for example, are here at the historical society. So whenever she, you know, gave up her or her career, we got those materials. She had a sense of history, a sense of community, and American Indians. And you really have to to study tribal politics to understand running in the eastern part of the state is so different from the western part of the state. It’s like two states just, you know, glued together almost. But she understood tribal politics as well, and she understood how to get out and then work and make things happen. So she is an amazing woman. I wish I had met her.
Thompson: Yeah. Wouldn’t that have been something. You know, but I think what impresses me her impresses me about her, she’s sneaky political. So you see this picture of her, and she looks like your grandmother, and she looks like she would bake you some cookies, which, since she owned a cafeteria, she was probably good at baking cookies. I’m just guessing. I have no firsthand knowledge of that.
Kodumthara: Sure.
Thompson: But she put herself in the right places. You don’t get, you don’t get appointed postmaster of Muskogee, which she was the first female postmaster of a First Class post office. She was the highest paid woman in government at one time. You don’t get that without having good relationships, without having some political savvy to do it. So we hear this story as, oh, she stood behind her cash register, and she didn’t really campaign, but she she was smarter than she’s given credit.
Kodumthara: No, she knew how to connect with people. And I think she did it in a way that made sense for her and in a way that she felt people would be most comfortable with. And I’m using comfortable in quotes here because she’s doing this at a time where there are people who are coming in with all sorts of assumptions on what people on what women should look like, how women should behave. And she, too, is coming in with some of those traditional thoughts. Right? So she is trying to fit into that sort of thinking, but also work outside of that thinking. She’s doing double time here, and she does it really well, and that works in her favor.
Blackburn: And let me repeat, her connection to tribal politics, I think, was really important because American Indians were master politicians. They kept statehood, you know, retired for years. And from 1866 to 1898, basically, they keep allotment away because they have their lobby groups. They’re campaigning. They’re running against it. It’s hardball politics. And she’s growing up among those Indians. She learns those systems, and she understands how to make things happen. Of course, today you have to have a lot of money and the big checks behind you. You didn’t at that time. You could run a campaign if you had the press. People in Edmond, public education, especially superintendents and principals and county commissioners. And if you had those connections, you had an advantage. You didn’t have to get out and make TV commercials. You didn’t have to.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: To send a postcard every other day to every eligible voter. It was a much more subtle game, and she understood that.
Thompson: And by the way, if you go to the University of Tulsa or you are an alum of the University of Tulsa, you can thank Alice Robertson because in 1885, she becomes the leader of the Minerva Boarding School for Girls from the Five Tribes, and that later becomes Henry Kendall College, which later becomes the University of Tulsa. And so she was one of the leaders who started that school. And you, you have her to thank. I’m really interested to in her campaign slogan, because as I looked at it, this could be a campaign slogan for a Republican in today’s election. And her campaign slogan was, ”I am a Christian, I am an American, I am a Republican.”
Kodumthara: Yeah, yeah.
Thompson: I mean, tell me that wouldn’t be, I mean, I’m surprised I don’t see that on some campaign signs for Republicans, and maybe in some forms you do. But that that was her campaign slogan, and she was someone who, out of 27 million American women, 18 ran for Congress in 1920, and only Alice Robertson was victorious. So you have to give her credit where credit was due. The Oklahoma Times editorialized and said, “W. W. Hastings, representative of the second district, who was defeated by Miss Alice Robertson, was considered by many to be the most abled man in the Oklahoma delegation, yet he was beaten by a political novice. Alice Robertson is a good woman, and her record for constructive work is fine. Yet as far as congressional caliber is concerned, she is not to be classified with Hastings.” So she had, she had a big hill to climb to try to impress people. The Harlow’s Weekly on January 6, 1921, said ”Miss Robertson is probably the first candidate to make an extended use of the want ad department of newspapers to feature her campaign, and practically every large daily in the state and nation has commented upon this new and successful use of advertising.” And why did she use the want ads? Because they wouldn’t let her advertise in the regular advertised spot. So smart when she was, and she ends up serving a two-year term. She becomes the first woman to preside over a session of Congress while she is there. So, certainly left her mark. And as we mentioned before, it would be a long time before Oklahoma elected another woman to Congress. So and currently we have one in our congressional delegation, and that’s Stephanie Bice, who was our guest just a couple of episodes ago on our episode about alcohol in Oklahoma.
So, moving on, I want to cover a couple of the women who were elected to the legislature for the very first time. And once again, this is a groundbreaking, groundbreaking moment here. We had Lamar Looney. Lamar Looney was elected to the state Senate. She was born in 1871 in Alabama. She was elected the Harmon County Register of Deeds and then the county clerk in 1916. And Harlow’s Weekly in December of 1920 said, “For six years before her election to the present position, she has been in the Harmon County Courthouse, first as Register of Deeds, then when that office, when that office was combined with the county clerk, she served two terms in that capacity.” She unseated the male incumbent, George Wilson of Mangum, to become the first women. And she was a part of the Democratic Party. And she actually served from 1921 to 1929. So it wouldn’t be just one term for her. She served for eight years, introduced 28 bills during that time, and chaired the state and county affairs committee. And then she later ran for the US House and the US Senate but didn’t get those positions.
Kodumthara: You know what’s remarkable about Lamar Looney is she was a widow, a mother of, I think, six kids. And she was, you know, giving piano lessons to try and make sure she could support her family. So she’s doing whatever she can. And so in the middle of all of that, what she realized is, is that there’s not enough support for women, not enough support for her children. They don’t have enough from government that she believes that that children should have or that widow should have. And that’s what she, that’s what starts her up in politics. And she starts not on a national level, she starts locally like all progressives do. She starts right there in her hometown. And before you know it, she runs for office, and she wins. And it’s the same sort of thing that we see often is based on name recognition. She goes out, and she meets people, and they know her by name, and they know who she is. They know how she struggles. She’s the lady who gives piano lessons. And it is a remarkable political career that she has, at least locally for sure.
Blackburn: I think the fact that she got started in county government is significant, because county government was more important to the people of Oklahoma in 1920, 1910, at least than any other statewide office, because that’s where most of the services came from that affected your own lives. Building the the farm-to-market road, making sure that there’s a schoolhouse in every township, making sure that poor people have something to eat or commodities or the county poor farm. The county commissioners and county officials, like her position, were doing the job that people wanted. And so she was serving the people.
Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. The other woman elected is Bessie McColgin. And I have to admit, I did a little bit of a deep dive down the rabbit hole on Bessie because she just was fascinating me when I was reading articles on The Gateway to Oklahoma History. The things that she overcame to get to where she was in her life. Just fascinating. First of all, when she was three years old, her parents died, and she was sent to, Illinois to be raised by members of the family there. She was born in Kansas. She attended the Wesleyan School of Oratory in Bloomington, Illinois, and was known to give a good speech when she was out on the stump. I saw that in several newspaper articles. She married Grant McColgin in 1895. They came to Oklahoma Territory in 1901, and they bought a relinquishment in Roger Mills County in 1903. Now, when they got to Roger Mills County, this is I read this quote in a newspaper interview with her. And when they went to Roger Mills County, it wasn’t by automobile, which, it probably would have been difficult anyway. I suspect the roads wouldn’t have been up to par. So it was in horse and wagon with her kids. And this is what she said, recounting that trip, ”I drove the team of one of our two covered wagons. The three little children were in my wagon and on Cotton Creek, west of Cheyenne, one night, we hurried across the stream before an approaching rainstorm. On a high slope, one of my wagon wheel slipped into a deep rut, and the wagon rolled slowly over, breaking an axle. Buckets of milk, water, and molasses were sitting on the sides and poured their contents over the red hills, and the cries of the three children broke the lonely prairie.”
Blackburn: That is poetic.
Thompson: I mean, just think of that. Now, she goes on to talk about how by the time they got to their homestead, where there was supposed to be a house and a little bit of furniture, that they bought, a prairie fire had moved through the area and burned it completely to the ground, and they had to start all over. And if you want to talk about tough pioneer life, I mean, this is Bessie and her family and spades. She goes on to become the first postmaster of Ridgeton, Oklahoma. She becomes the first county president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which, as we talked about in previous episodes, many of the WCTU were heavily involved in the suffrage movement. She is the midwife for the county. She delivers over 40 babies, and that is her passion for women’s health. And that’s one of the things, the torches she carries in the legislature when she gets there. She becomes the first woman elected to the Oklahoma House. She said, ”Whenever I’ve been asked to do any public work, when any community interest has called for my help, I have always answered yes. So although the proposal came as a great surprise, and I felt perfectly incompetent, it did not enter my head to refuse.” She, when she got to the legislature, she introduced a bill to create the Bureau of Child Hygiene within the state Department of Health because she saw how many mothers had poor nutrition and, leading up to their baby’s birth, which led to complications in pregnancy. And it led to, babies being stillborn. And she also wanted babies to have proper care after they were born. And that was her motivation for suggesting that, and then I love this. She was asked, she had eight children, and she was asked, well, what are you going to do? Several of them were grown by this time. But what are you going to do with your children while you’re in the legislature, which is questions women still get today. And I can only imagine the side eye that she must have given them because she basically says, I was a midwife, I was the postmaster. I was, you know, whenever you were sick, I never failed to, you know, come to your aid. All of you know what I’ve been doing. Nobody ever asked during all those times. What are you doing with your kids? They basically said, hey, I’m here and I’m ready to serve. She said, Oklahoma City has all the modern conveniences of life. I think I’ll be just right. And she was. When Governor Robertson began his message addressing the legislature, during that first session in 1921, he said, ”When I spoke to former sessions of the legislature, I addressed them as gentlemen. I can’t do that now. I am happy to say I address you as ladies and gentlemen.”
Kodumthara: Oh that is cool.
Thompson: So that is Bessie McColgin. And I must say I was fascinated.
Blackburn: There’s something about Roger Mills County and strong women because Augusta Metcalfe, another woman who made her own way as a pioneer, you know, Grandma Moses of the American West and then Melvina Heisch, our own state historic preservation deputy director here for many years from Roger Mills County. So strong women come from the that time.
Thompson: That’s right. Well, and if you’ve driven through that area before, you’ve seen that landscape.
Kodumthara: Yeah.
Thompson: Can you imagine what it must have been to live out there miles from any town, miles from civilization, and just knowing that you had to make it. You had to be tough out there, right?
Kodumthara: Absolutely, absolutely. Especially if you’re on your own, and you’ve got to work. Yeah, absolutely.
Thompson: So the last guy I want to talk about is the Eighth District congressman. And this is, I don’t want to spend too much time on this, but we can’t not mention it. Emanuel Herrick, called Manuel Herrick, he had run as an Independent for Congress in the 1918 election and garnered all of 56 votes.
Kodumthara: Sure.
Thompson: And he changes he runs as a Republican in the 1920 election. And the congressman is Dick T. Morgan. Now, have we had a whole podcast earlier this year on Dick T. Morgan. And we know he was a, he was a well-liked, well-respected congressman who accomplished as much as he could being in the minority in the US Congress. But, the only person that dared to run against him was Manuel Herrick. Now, Manuel Herrick had done several stints in the, what used to be called the insane asylum. Today, we call it the mental institution in Norman. And he was raised by his mother to believe he was the Christ.
Kodumthara: Quick question.
Thompson: Sure. Yeah.
Kodumthara: So sorry to interrupt. Was his mother ever in the mental institute? I’m just curious.
Thompson: I couldn’t find anything on his mother.
Kodumthara: It’s just out of curiosity.
Thompson: His mother’s name was Belinda, if anybody wants to look it up.
Kodumthara: All right, that’s an assignment for the listeners.
Thompson: Do some research. But he was raised to believe that he was the Christ. And so in many cases, they would go visit churches. And in the middle of the sermon, Manuel would stand up and tell the preacher all the things he was wrong about, and he was banned from most of the churches in the Cherokee Outlet.
Kodumthara: Well, sure.
Thompson: And in fact, his parents would walk behind him to show the proper reverence.
Kodumthara: What?
Thompson: Yeah, for the Christ.
Kodumthara: Trait.
Thompson: No, I read this, I promise. I read this in my research.
Kodumthara: Somebody look it up and see if his parents were in the mental institute.
Thompson: Dick Morgan dies, leaving Manuel Herrick as the Republican nominee.
Kodumthara: Because he was the, oh.
Blackburn: It was after filing. Probably.
Thompson: Yes. So Dick Morgan dies. Manuel Herrick is the Republican nominee. And because all these were, because it was such a Republican sweep that year, Manuel Herrick gets elected to Congress.
Kodumthara: Well, sure.
Thompson: And he publishes this notice in the, on February 22, 1921, before he leaves for Washington. Before leaving, he stated that ”All newspaper reporters who are wise and value their good health while they have it will stay away from him, Daily Oklahoman and the Daily News.” While he was in office, as you can imagine, he didn’t accomplish much, and he was just in for the two years. But he did hold, he invited the women of America to write to him on the subject of why I want to be Mrs. Manuel.
Kodumthara: Oh, well, that’s nice of him.
Thompson: And then there were lawsuits because women actually did, and he didn’t marry them.
Kodumthara: Oh. I have so many questions!
Blackburn: Yeah, this sounds like more fiction and reality.
Thompson: Oh, that was our, our Republican congressman from Oklahoma.
Blackburn: Yeah, that you can write a screenplay now for Netflix about this weirdo.
Thompson: 1921 to 1923. So, in the aftermath of this election, every Republican nominee for statewide office in Oklahoma won their election. The GOP took a Corporation Commission post. They got a seat on the Court of Criminal Appeals, and they all four vacant slots on the state Supreme Court went Republican. The Democrats lost three incumbent congressmen, and the Oklahoma House went Republican for the first time in state history. It would stay that way for two years till everything swung back again. Fifty-five of the 92 seats in the Oklahoma House of Representatives were Republican. And that was the bloodbath for the Democrats. And then, talking about sort of the Monday morning quarterback. I found some nice quotes in Harlow’s Weekly talking about trying to analyze what happened, and as one of them said, ”It is generally recognized that the disaffection of the Gore vote in the recent election played an important part in winning the election for other Republicans. They also said, ”Those Democrats and socialists who registered their protests against the League of Nations and the senatorial situation as created by the Democratic primary carried with their votes the Republican, judicial, and state tickets into office.” And then the Oklahoma Times wrote, “A glance at the map of Oklahoma showing the counties carried by Republicans gives a good indication of the extent to which the wheat farmers, sore at the condition of the wheat market, and the cotton farmers disappointed at the big breaks in the cotton market, hit out hard against the only thing in sight and voted against the representatives of the administration in retaliation.”
Kodumthara: Yeah.
Thompson: And the socialist paper, the Oklahoma Leader, said, ”There was never a party worse fooled by an election than the Democrats were in Oklahoma last Tuesday. They started out by claiming everything and awakened to find that they had won nothing. And they thought of their machine as unbeatable so long that they could not conceive of defeat.” So what can we learn from this election, our illustrious historians, Dr. Blackburn and Dr. Kodumthara?
Kodumthara: I think there’s a lot to learn, right? I think one of the things that party leadership can learn, no matter what is, is that it’s there’s no such thing, is that party loyalty is not actually the goal here. Because if you put party loyalty over connection to people, then then you’re going to lose every single time. There has to be an understanding of what the people are going through. Right? And in Oklahoma in particular, as we’ve discussed before, there’s a lot happening. There’s a lot of change going on, and there’s a lot of disillusionment, and there has to be an honest conversation about where those struggles are, where their frustrations are. And there has to be a real conversation about real solutions and not just rhetoric. And in 1920, especially from the Democratic Party, it’s just rhetoric that we’re going to continue on with Wilson’s vision. Well, the problem is, is Wilson’s vision wasn’t what they wanted. They had real issues with Wilson and his vision. So I think what we can definitely carry on from that or learn from that is if a party wants to be successful, if a politician wants to be successful, and then there has to be a genuine connection with the voting public, first and foremost, for sure.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: I think another thing we can learn is that in turbulent times, where things are changing so rapidly and the reasons behind the changes are so complex. It provides an opportunity for someone who has a simple solution, a simple slogan or two, and they can come in with promises without ever intending to keep them and sway public opinion because people are tired of the what had been. They said, we’re not happy with the way it is. So the people who were in here last, we’re going to vote out, and we’re going to go in and believe these promises. And I think that’s what we’re dealing with right now, and people were worn out. The woke movement, so-called woke movement that keeps being referred to, even though that’s kind of a continuation of progressive attitudes to me, goes back 100 years. It was so, so aggressive for a while. There was a reaction to that. People said, oh, we don’t want to hear anymore about that. We’re tired of all of this. Let’s get back to a simpler times. And the idea of making America great again, as if America was great in the 1950s. It’s not if you’re an African American. It’s not if you’re a woman. It’s not if if you’re at the bottom of the totem pole, but, you know, it’s a slogan. It’s a simple answer to a very complex set of issues.
Thompson: Returning to normalcy.
Blackburn: Return to normalcy. Exactly. And that’s what I think we’re seeing now, and they won’t last.
Kodumthara: One of the things that I want to add on to that, I think is important here, and it kind of connects back to your trip to China here as well, and that is we have an extraordinary opportunity if we, if we make the choice to take it, and that is to see each other’s humanity and we very rarely take that chance, because I think we only see our own issues. We only see our own circumstances. And then we hear the slogans, and then we latch on to those simple slogans and we think, oh, that’s the solution, right? And instead, rather than seeing, okay, this is a very complicated issue, maybe that’s going to require some time and some complicated thinking. Rather than see you as a human being who’s trying to raise your kids and trying to put food on the table, and then you see me in the same way that we’d rather just put all of that aside and just see the easy solution. And I think this is one of those election, the 1920 election, and that whole time period is a reminder that there is no simple solution, that it does take time, and it’s complicated. But if we sit down together and actually see each other as people who are in this together, it would be worth the effort and the time.
Thompson: I think a lesson that I take away from this is that the pendulum always swings, and in politics we can start to think that it’ll never change. But it will. You know, you look at Oklahoma and the Democratic Party domination, and this was a little hiccup in that. Democrats would go back to dominating the political landscape up into the, really into the 1980s and the in the State House up until the 1990s. But the pendulum will swing. And it’s important for parties, and it’s important to politicians to really keep their ear to the ground about what’s going on with the people. And you can’t rely, you can’t just rely on the fact that we won elections in the past, or they bought our message in the past. You have to look at what are the people going through right now, because just like the Democratic Party in Oklahoma got surprised in this 1920 election, if you’re not really paying attention to the situation on the ground, it can sneak up on you, and people have shown that they are going to vote with the the people who most identify with their values and also most identify with solving the problems that they’re facing on a daily basis. And I think if there’s anything, if there’s any reason both parties have really just failed to connect with the people right now is I feel like that they’re not, it’s more about talking points than it is actually solving them.
Kodumthara: Solutions. Yeah, I’d agree.
Thompson: And I think that that sets up, you know, that sets us up for change. Now when that’s going to happen, I have no idea. But it’s out there, and it could happen.
Kodumthara: Yeah. I agree.
Thompson: T this has been a wonderful conversation.
Kodumthara: We had so much fun.
Blackburn: Thank you for joining us today.
Kodumthara: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much.
Thompson: Well, we always appreciate having you on. And, I could count on the fact that we’ll be doing it again.
Kodumthara: You better! I will be here.
Thompson: Well, friends. Thanks for listening to us today. We look forward to seeing you in a future episode. You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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