“Flee Dust Bowl for California”43

Going down that hot dusty road

I passed your only childhood home

When Daddy was a boy, oil was discovered on Osage land, and overnight the tribe became rich. As a young girl growing up on the Osage reservation in Fairfax, OK, I felt my father owned the town. He had property everywhere. The local movie theater on Main Street, and the pool hall opposite, belonged to him. Our ten-room, terra-cotta-brick house stood high on a hill overlooking the reservation.

When my father was a young man, he married a young German immigrant and they had three children—Alexander, Tommy, and Frances. They were little children when their mother died. Later, when Ruth Porter, my mother, came to Fairfax to visit her sister, who worked as a cook and housekeeper for my Grandma Tall Chief, Daddy was Fairfax's most eligible bachelor. Mother must have arrived tired and dusty from her long journey, but from what I'm told there was an instant attraction.

Mother was born in Oxford, KS. A determined woman of Scots-Irish blood, she was beautiful, with light brown hair, gray eyes, and delicate features. My tall and lanky father and my tiny mother made an odd couple physically, but they were very much in love. As soon as they married they started a family, and Daddy's children from his first marriage went to live with Grandma Tall Chief, who brought them up in her house at the bottom of the hill.

I was born in Fairfax in the tiny local hospital on January 24, 1925. The doctor mishandled the forceps, leaving a large red mark on my forehead. Otherwise, I was healthy and normal. They named me Elizabeth Marie after two grandmothers: Eliza Tall Chief and Marie Porter, who'd been named for Marie Antoinette. They called me Betty Marie.

When Mother became pregnant again, she decided she wasn't going to repeat the experience of giving birth in Fairfax. Her next child, my sister Marjorie, born twenty-one months after me, came into the world in Denver.

Summers were hot in Oklahoma, and every July and August my parents drove to Colorado Springs, where Daddy played golf and Mother, Marjorie, and I played in the pool of the Broadmoor Hotel. When I was three, Mother took me for my first ballet lesson in the Broadmoor's basement. What I remember most is that the ballet teacher told me to stand straight and turn each of my feet out to the side, the first position. I couldn't believe it. But I did what I was told.

Ballet lessons were a weekly affair for me, and for Marjorie too, after she was three. In 1930 Mrs. Sabin, an itinerant ballet teacher from Tulsa, visited Fairfax looking for students. When she heard about the two little girls in the town's most prominent family, she headed for the house on the hill. Before long, Mrs. Sabin had me dancing on pointe and giving recitals.

But I don't look back on her with gratitude. She was a wretched instructor who never taught the basics, and it's a miracle I wasn't permanently harmed. And my frugal mother was no help. She always bought my toe shoes a size too big so she wouldn't have to buy them too often. Then she'd stuff them with cloth pads so they'd fit and I'd be able to perform the double and triple turns on pointe that seemed to thrill everybody. Of course, Mother didn't really understand the finer points of ballet, and I simply did what she asked. I showed an aptitude for dancing and wanted to please. It never occurred to me to say, "It hurts to do that."

When I was growing up, my Grandma Tall Chief was a majestic figure to me. A typical Indian woman, she wore her hair in a single braid down her back and always had a tribal blanket draped over her shoulders. She and my father were my link to the Osage people. At the time, the tribe lived royally. I was an adult before I heard some of their history.

In the eighteenth century, the Osage lived in Virginia's Piedmont region, where French and Spanish missionaries converted the Indians to Catholicism. When white people settled the region, the tribe migrated to the valleys near the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. After the West opened up and settlers began arriving, the Osage were forced to move again. They went to Kansas, where they farmed the land and hunted.

In the nineteenth century, the white man was continually chasing the Indians off their land. As a result, the Osage weren't destined to remain in Kansas. But in 1871, when the U.S. seized their property, the government had a change of heart, if only for a short period. They paid the Indians for what they took, and with the profits the tribe bought a million and a half acres in northwestern Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma.

The Osage had to adjust to the new environment. People couldn't hunt or farm, and times were difficult, but no one starved. Underground lay one of the biggest mineral reserves in North America, and when oil was discovered, everything changed for the Osage.

Grandma Tall Chief's father, Chief Peter Bigheart, played an important role in the Osage saga. In 1886 Grandma traveled with him and Chief James Bigheart to Washington. Both men spoke English and were on the council that worked out the provisions of the Osage Allotment Act. The act, which was approved by Congress in 1906, divided the reservation into tracts. Each of the 2,229 members of the tribe received approximately 658 acres, but the allotment of land applied to surface rights only. All mineral rights, the gas and oil that lay underground, were held in common by the tribe. Each Osage received a "headright," meaning that he or she would receive an equal share of all mineral income, which was tax-free. An Osage might sell the surface rights to his land, but never a "headright." That was illegal. The only way an Osage could lose his "headright" was to die.

By 1925, even though the Osage had become rich, they, like all Indian tribes, were subject to government edicts, which were designed to destroy tribal customs. Indian ceremonies were banned and tribal languages forbidden. The Osage and many other Indian nations kept their culture alive by holding ceremonies in remote corners of the reservation. Marjorie and I were thrilled when, together with Grandma Tall Chief, Daddy drove us to the location.

The powwow was a journey to the past. The Indians wore traditional tribal clothing made of animal hide, elaborate headdresses, tribal blankets, beads, silver jewelry, and moccasins; they clustered in groups, sitting on the ground in semicircles, smoking pipes. During conversations, they stared off into space, never looking at the person they were talking to. It was as if they could feel the person instead of seeing him, and that was preferable to visual contact.

At the powwow there was dancing, and Indian music was played on tom-toms. Osage women didn't really dance. Instead they formed a circle around the men and did a little side step, shifting their weight from one foot to the other in time to the drumbeat, covering very little space. Men did the active dancing, stomping their feet on the ground to the tom-tom rhythm. Accompanying themselves on the drums, they also sang songs that told fables about the history of the tribe. The rhythm of those songs has stayed with me.

When I was five, Mother enrolled me in Sacred Heart Catholic School, which was down the hill from our house in the opposite direction of Grandma's, almost at the end of our driveway. The teachers there, impressed by my reading ability, placed me in a class two grades ahead of the other children my age.

I was a good student and fit in at Sacred Heart. But in many ways, I was a typical Indian girl—shy, docile, introverted. I loved being out doors and spent most of my time wandering around our big front yard where there was an old swing and a garden. I'd also ramble around the grounds of our summer cottage hunting for arrowheads in the grass. Finding one made me shiver with excitement. These rolling pastures, green and lush, seemed magical to me.

As a little girl, however, I didn't have much time to dream. When it was discovered that I had perfect pitch Mother insisted I play the piano. Most of my day was taken up with schoolwork and music and ballet lessons. I remember practicing ballet one afternoon with Marjorie, when my half-sister, Frances, and my cousin Pearl Bigheart appeared at the window of our house, giggling and making fun of what we were doing.

Cousin Pearl was an orphan, and our family was concerned for her well-being. When she was small, her house had been firebombed and everyone inside killed, murdered for their headrights. Pearl's situation was not uncommon. In the 1920s, villainous white men married into Osage families, then poisoned their wives or shot them in order to get their money, another example of the slaughter of Indians that is a notorious chapter of U.S. history.

This was called the Osage Reign of Terror, and it began in 1921 when an Osage woman was found with a bullet in her head at the bottom of a canyon. William K. Hale, a prosperous rancher, who was responsible for this death and many others, was also responsible for the murder of Pearl's relatives. He had persuaded his cousin Ernest Burkhart to marry one of Pearl's aunts. After the wedding, Burkhart poisoned her and inherited her headright.

But he was greedy. He and Hale made plans to grab all the family's headrights by dynamiting the house and killing everyone inside. Luckily, Pearl was visiting Grandma Tall Chief when the blast occurred, and she escaped with her life. Grandma was raising her now. The irony was that because of the carnage, Pearl now owned more headrights than anyone. She was one of the richest people in the tribe.

When Hale and Burkhart realized what had happened, they developed a new scheme and tried stealing Pearl's fortune with a fake life insurance policy naming Burkhart as beneficiary. Insurance scams were another means of robbing the Indians. But Grandma was too brave and too smart to be taken in. She couldn't read or write, and used to sign important papers with an X, but she knew what was happening. When Burkhart and Hale came knocking on her door, she stood up to the killers and sent them away.

Eventually, the FBI was brought in to investigate. By 1926 the agency had gathered enough evidence to indict Burkhart and Hale and convict them for murder. The Reign of Terror had come to an end but not before more than sixty Osage Indians had been slaughtered.

Once Marjorie grew older, Mrs. Sabin created routines we performed—part ballet, part vaudeville—to "Stars and Stripes Forever" and "Glow Worm" at community events, county fairs, and rodeos. For "Glow Worm," I wore a costume my mother made by putting turquoise feathers onto her peach negligee. In "Stars and Stripes Forever," an American flag was sewn into the lining of my cape.

Like many in the wealthy Osage tribe, Daddy had never worked a day in his life. He was a modern-day Osage in another respect. He drank. His drinking ran in cycles, mostly when the oil royalties check arrived. Royalties were paid quarterly for the sum of several thousand dollars, a large amount for the time but considerably less than it had been because by 1930 the Osage oil supply was being depleted.

Mother and Daddy often argued about money. Since the income he received from his real estate holdings was negligible, the family lived on the oil checks. Usually he was patient, always trying to calm Mother's fears, but the arrival of the oil money set him off. He'd pocket the check and cash it, then disappear for a week at a time. Mother would become frantic. She was afraid that Daddy would spend all the money, or worse, injure himself or become ill. She suffered terribly during Daddy's binges, never knowing her husband's whereabouts or what he was doing.

Mother endured father's alcoholism. She was helpless to change it and never judged him. She loved him in spite of his flaws. When the famous novelist Edna Ferber was writing her book Cimarron, which is set in Oklahoma, she tried to interview Daddy. Cimarron concerned the Osage and their headrights, and I think Ferber believed that Daddy had information she needed. But my mother wouldn't let him see her. She was jealous. Daddy was extremely handsome, attractive to women. Although Ferber wasn't known for her good looks, I believe Mother was afraid that Daddy would fall in love with the sophisticated novelist and abandon us.

My mother grew increasingly dissatisfied with our life in Fairfax. To her it was a place where people wasted their lives, where her husband destroyed himself with drink, and where her daughters remained in small-town music and ballet lessons that never would amount to much.

In 1933 Mother could wait no longer. To her, Los Angeles was a giant city that held a future with glittering promise. Daddy raised no objection to our leaving. L.A. promised a dreamlike climate in which he could play golf all year long, in truth, a powerful incentive for moving. We crowded into Daddy's maroon Pierce-Arrow and set off into our future.

Hours in the car passed with little to do other than gaze out the windows as the world flashed by. When we reached California, the expanse of orange groves hypnotized me with its order and brilliance of color. The Pacific Ocean seemed to be everywhere, lurking beyond curves in the road, hiding between gaps in the trees. After the ponds, creeks, and rivers of Oklahoma and Colorado, the immensity of the ocean terrified me.

We reached Los Angeles after an overnight stay with Mother's relatives in San Diego. Without knowing where we would settle, we just drove on. In the Wilshire District Daddy stopped for gas. Marjorie and I were restless and hungry, so Mother took us to the local drugstore. We ordered hamburgers and soda pop at the fountain, and we sat on red-leather stools while waiting for them to be served. Mother asked the druggist if he knew a good dancing school in the neighborhood.

"Yes, I do," the man told us. "Ernest Belcher's."

That was it. An anonymous man in an unfamiliar town decided our fate with those few words. After we devoured our hamburgers, Mother walked out to the car and told Daddy that she wanted to live right there, in a neighborhood where we had only stopped to fill the gas tank.

In California, public school teachers seemed to understand that an eight-year-old had no business being in the fifth grade, and they placed me back in the third grade in what they called an Opportunity Class, an advanced program. Opportunity Class or not, I was still way ahead. With nothing to do, I often wandered around the school yard by myself.

Ballet school was different. There I had to work. At Ernest Belcher's studio, in addition to ballet, pupils studied tap, acrobatics, and Spanish dancing. So Marjorie and I had it all. Elissa Cansino, who taught Spanish dancing, was a wonderful teacher, and I became expert with the castanets. We even studied tumbling, and for hours on end I had to practice walkovers until I wanted to scream. I hated the tumbling classes and worked myself into such a frenzy over them that Mother let me stop, but years later I'd be able to put all I learned there to good use.

Mr. Belcher understood, however, that it was not character dancing technique Marjorie and I lacked. A character dancer performs national or folk dances, such as mazurkas and polkas, which are not performed on pointe. My sister and I were deficient in the basics of ballet technique. Our training shocked him.

"Your daughters have been put on pointe way, way too early, Mrs. Tall Chief. It's a miracle they haven't injured themselves."

He insisted we go back to the beginning.

We were fortunate. Mr. Belcher was an excellent teacher who had studied the principles of Enrico Cecchetti, the Italian ballet master who worked in Russia at the turn of the century. A small man with a tiny mustache, Mr. Belcher sat when he taught; even so, he would demonstrate in his chair, and that fascinated me. I was eager to learn.

While Marjorie and I were studying at Mr. Belcher's, our family moved from the Wilshire District to a house on Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills. Public schools in Beverly Hills were academically superior to those in the rest of the city, and Mother made the move so we could attend a public school. But at Beverly Vista School I was made to feel different.

Some of the students made fun of my last name, pretending they didn't understand if it was Tall or Chief. A few made war whoops whenever they saw me, and asked why I didn't wear feathers or if my father took scalps. After a while, they became accustomed to me, but the experience was painful. Eventually, I turned the spelling of my last name into one word. Everything in school was in strict alphabetical order and I wanted to avoid confusion.

When I was twelve years old and Marjorie was ten and a half, we went to a new ballet teacher. A ballet mother at Mr. Belcher's told Mother that the great Bronislava Nijinska had opened a studio near Beverly Hills, and even though I'm not sure Mother knew who Nijinska was, she decided to have Marjorie and me study with her. Without telling Mr. Belcher, she enrolled us at her school.

The new studio seemed no different from Mr. Belcher's. Little girls were changing into leotards, and mothers were milling about gossiping. A small, rotund gray-haired woman with great, big, luminous green eyes was counting heads. I thought she was the secretary.

When the pianist entered and bowed to her, the little gray-haired woman clapped her hands, a signal for students to take their places at the barre. In a flash, I realized who she was. By then, there was no mistaking Madame Nijinska. Everyone at the school was in awe of her.

Bronislava Nijinska was the sister of the fabulous Vaslav Nijinsky, and like him a graduate of the Imperial Theatre School in St. Petersburg, Russia. She too had danced at the Maryinsky Theatre and with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Europe, and she was also a choreographer. Two of her ballets, Les Noces and Les Biches, were classics.

When we started working I saw at once that Madame's class was rigorous. Students weren't allowed to slouch at the barre or hang on it haphazardly, and we had to be conscious of each exercise. After we finished doing a step, we had to walk to the side and stand still with perfect posture until it was time to take our places for the next exercise. At the same time, Madame indicated that we should watch our fellow students closely and listen to every correction.

Because her English was practically nonexistent Madame Nijinska rarely spoke. She didn't have to. She had incredible personal magnetism and she radiated authority. Most of the time she demonstrated. It was hard to imagine her as a ballerina, but how she moved! Her footwork was phenomenal. She jumped and flashed around the studio. I was under her spell. The likes of Madame Nijinska were something I had never seen before.

Every day she dressed in the same pants and plain top; her ballet slippers had a slight heel. In her pointe class, we'd have to repeat steps over and over, learning how to balance and how to hold a position so that our entire backs were being utilized. She was very precise. In first position, elbows had to be held a certain way and the little finger had to touch the front of the thigh. If Madame could come by and move someone's elbow, the position was wrong.

She was insistent on port de bras, and she told us the reason her brother could jump so high and hover in the air so long was because of the control he had over his abdominals. It was from Madame Nijinska that I first understood that the dancer's soul is in the middle of the body and that proper breathing is essential.

Even though she wasn't verbal, Nijinska knew how to get her point across. She communicated with a firm tap on the shoulder. Her husband, Nicholas Singaevsky, sometimes translated, but his English wasn't much better than hers.

"Madame say you look like spaghetti," he'd explain, and the message was understood. He'd also expound her philosophy. "Madame say when you sleep, sleep like ballerina. Even on street waiting for bus, stand like ballerina."

So we didn't concentrate only for an hour and a half a day on what was being taught. We lived it, and I was beginning to understand just how hard I was going to have to work if I wanted to be a dancer. I was small-hipped and had to work hard for the turnout essential to ballet. But since I was eager to develop, when I was in Nijinska's class I never took my eyes off her, never looked away, even when she was helping another girl.

The force of Madame Nijinska's personality, and her unwavering devotion to her art, helped me to understand that ballet was what I wanted to do with my life. In her studio I became committed to becoming a ballerina, and Madame understood I was serious. She saw that I was very musical and had good proportions, and she paid a great deal of attention to me. She was always giving me corrections, a sign of her interest, and little by little she began treating me like her protégée.

In 1938 the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo's arrival in Los Angeles was a momentous event in my world. With a slew of other adolescent girls, Marjorie and I flocked to performances, returning several times. We saw Giselle and Balanchine's Serenade, but Gaite Parisienne, Ballet Russe's signature piece, so romantic and colorful, made the strongest impression. Choreographed to operetta music by Jacques Offenbach, the ballet was a frothy celebration of fin-de-siecle European ambience, filled with high spirits and convivial dancing. I was captivated.

More thrilling than the performances, however, was when the Ballet Russe stars I worshiped from afar arrived at Madame Nijinska's to take class and pay their respects. I couldn't get over the sight of those magnificent artists in my teacher's studio. Frederic Franklin, Mia Slavenska, George Zoritch: They were all there. And the biggest star of all, Alexandra Danilova, gave Nijinska roses when she entered the studio, and executed a reverence as she presented them.

It wasn't only at Nijinska's, however, that I was learning what it meant to be a professional. Ada Broadbent, a one-time dancer with Fauchon and Marco's Hollywood Symphonic Ballet, used to choreograph dances for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, and Marjorie and I danced for her. Broadbent also staged extravaganzas of her own—a mix of vaudeville, show business, and classical ballet—that featured music and dancing on themes like "Dance Through the Ages." In one, Marjorie and I danced a jazzy number to the tune of the "Black Bottom." We also danced the "Waltz of the Flowers" and something called "South American Rumba."

Broadbent choreographed the first pas de deux I ever danced, to music from The Vagabond King for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. Paul Godkin, who later joined Ballet Theatre, was my partner. We did it in one of Broadbent's productions at the Philharmonic Auditorium. We also appeared at the Shrine Auditorium, where Milton Berle was on the bill.

When I was about fifteen years old, Madame Nijinska decided to stage three of her ballets, Etude, Chopin Concerto, and Bolero, at the Hollywood Bowl, which is a huge outdoor amphitheater in the Hollywood hills. The music she was using for Chopin Concerto, the Piano Concerto in E Minor, was special to me as I was playing it on the piano. That I was familiar with the concerto seemed like a good omen.

One big role was being performed by a lovely dancer named Cyd Charisse. Cyd, who would later become a movie star, was a stunningly beautiful girl who had already performed professionally with the Original Ballet Russe. When rehearsals began, instead of being cast opposite her in the other lead, I was put in the corps de ballet. I was hurt and humiliated. I couldn't understand what was happening. Madame Nijinska had always paid so much attention to me. What was wrong? Didn't she love me anymore? Wasn't I her favorite? I was miserable, and showed it. Not being used to dancing in the ensemble, I stood there in the line of girls without putting any energy or feeling into what I was doing.

Mother understood the problem. "You have to show that you want to dance with all your heart, Betty, even in the corps. You shouldn't just expect a role to be handed to you."

The next day, I put everything into rehearsing, and shortly thereafter was rewarded with the other leading part. I was ecstatic. Now I couldn't stop practicing, and went over the steps day and night.

Marjorie was also in the ballet, in the ensemble. The night of the performance we arrived at the Bowl about fifteen minutes before curtain. Mother drove us but got us there late. Uninitiated in the rites of professional theater, she didn't realize we were supposed to arrive two hours early to put on makeup and warm up.

At rehearsal earlier in the day we'd seen how slippery and hard the floor was. Canvas cloths had been laid down for the performance, but we arrived too late to try them out. Apprehensive, I stood in the wings waiting for my cue, and when I heard it I made my entrance. As soon as I started dancing, I slipped. I recovered quickly and went on, but I was shaken.

Madame Nijinska was watching from the wings. It was the only time I had seen her in street clothes. When I made my first exit, I went over to her, a stricken look on my face. But she made nothing of the incident.

Performing the ballet was different from dancing in the Broadbent extravaganzas. The choreography was extremely difficult. I had to perform double fouettes, a bravura step in which a whipping motion of the free leg propels the dancer around the supporting leg, with the most precise control. (The thirty-two fouettes the ballerina performs in Swan Lake, Act Three, is one of the most famous passages in the ballet.) And dancing next to Cyd, the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen in my life, with lovely long legs and sculptured feet, didn't help my confidence. But once I recovered my nerves, I attempted to perform as Madame Nijinska had taught me.

Madame Nijinska was my ballet teacher all through my high school years, and I worked hard to absorb everything she taught me and to do everything she said. Occasionally, however, I studied with other celebrated artists who came to Los Angeles to teach. One of them, David Lichine, a respected dancer-choreographer, made a favorable impression on Mother. His wife, Tatiana Riabouchinska, a beautiful Russian, had been one of the famous "baby" ballerinas Balanchine had created in Paris in the 1930s, and was also a star of Colonel de Basil's Original Ballet Russe. She seemed to epitomize all the qualities Mother admired. She was poised, ladylike, quite formal, and a wonderful dancer.

In my senior year, another star came to Los Angeles. Mia Slavenska, the beautiful Yugoslavian ballerina who danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, was teaching at a local studio and sometimes we went there to study with her.

Like Nijinska, Slavenska seemed to favor me and told my mother she was going to arrange an audition for Serge Denham and his committee when they came to town.

Mr. Denham was the head of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and on the appointed day he appeared at Slavenska's studio with Frederic Franklin and a few others I didn't recognize and watched her teach her class. When it was over, no one said anything to me or offered me any contract. But Mr. Denham did tell my mother, "She's very good. I'd like to see her after she graduates from high school."

That seemed like a vague promise and I was a little disappointed, but I didn't let it bother me. A part of me was determined to enter college. Yet, in an unexpected turn of events, my father didn't like the idea.

"You know, I've paid for your lessons all your life and now it's time for you to find a job," he said.

I was surprised, but ages seventeen through twenty are important years for a dancer. If I was going to be a ballerina it was time to get started. I auditioned for an MGM movie musical called Presenting Lily Mars, a Judy Garland vehicle. It wasn't much of a job; I was little more than a dancing extra, but I liked being on the set. Judy Garland worked hard and was full of energy. Listening to her sing on playback was a thrill. Daddy was proud.

As soon as my part in the film was completed I started thinking about what else I could do. I knew I didn't want to dance in the movies for a living. It wasn't gratifying. I was trying to figure out how to earn money when my mother startled me with a proposition.

"You know, Betty Marie, Tanya Riabouchinska is going to New York to join David Lichine and dance at Ballet Theatre. She asked me if you'd like to go along with her for the summer. She said she'd be perfectly willing to take you. I think it's wonderful. When you're in New York you can make an appointment with Mr. Denham and audition again for the Ballet Russe."

Mother was fired with enthusiasm for my dancing dream. It seemed a little out of character. She knew I was no longer practicing piano two hours a day. Perhaps she was beginning to understand my dreams. Most of all, the visit in New York must have seemed like a great way for me to spend the summer. She had absolute faith in the Lichines and knew they would look after my welfare. After I got over my surprise, I agreed to go. I still wanted to do whatever would please her.

Mother and I went out and bought a huge fortnighter suitcase, which I packed so full that we had a hard time closing it. I'm not sure what I put into it or why I thought I needed such a huge bag. I could hardly lift it off the ground. A few days later, Daddy drove us all to the terminal Marjorie, still in high school and studying with Nijinska, was excited on my behalf, certain that in New York I would be able to realize the dream we both shared of becoming a ballerina. After saying good-bye to Marjorie, Daddy, and Mother, I boarded the train with Riabouchinska I was on my way.

Oklahoma

Whites ostracized blacks in many ways after the Civil War. Part of the way that whites did this was through an elaborate social structure of unwritten rules that both races were to follow. However, there was another, and in some ways, more serious form of ostracism used against blacks. Whites enacted a series of segregation statutes known as “Jim Crow” laws. These laws relegated a variety of interactions between blacks and whites, including educational facilities, use of public facilities like restrooms and waiting rooms, and occupancy of hotels and hospitals—even cemeteries.

Throughout the early 20^th century, but especially after World War II, African Americans became more vocal in demanding their rights. Some of them filed court cases to contest unequal education opportunities. Others participated in letter writing campaigns to the federal government or circulated desegregation petitions. Still others adopted a different tactic known as nonviolent resistance.

Nonviolent resistance is a strategy to gain social change through strikes, sit-ins, boycotts, and civil disobedience. The idea is that the community is forced to address an issue that it has refused to deal with as a result of the actions of resisters. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the leaders of the American civil rights movement, believed in the usefulness of nonviolent resistance as an instrument of social change because of the example on the Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi.

Blacks in Oklahoma made wide use of the sit-in, a nonviolent tactic, in their march toward first-class citizenship. The leader of the sit-in movement in Oklahoma was an energetic, highly vocal woman named Clara Luper, Director of the Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council. A native of Okfuskee County, Luper took her undergraduate degree at Langston University, later received a master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma, and was a teacher for many years in the state. Luper believed in democratic government and her training as a social studies specialist doubtless had some impact on how she viewed America’s failure to solve the race problem. Prior to her involvement in the sit-in movement, she had been active in civil rights. Discrimination, she contended, degraded blacks, and amounted to immorality. A believer in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence, Luper set out to overthrow segregation in public places. She knew that legal methods took too much time and had often failed. Therefore, she turned to a technique that would bring the difference in treatment of black’s in public places to the attention of the entire community, and which would create such inconvenience that injustice to blacks would end.

Like other cities in many parts of America, Oklahoma City and other municipalities in the state adhered to a policy of segregation. There was much logic in striking at Oklahoma City; it had the state’s largest population and it was the capital, the center of Oklahoma’s political power. And it provided Luper with a potentially large number of young black youths to man her “children’s army” against segregation, bigotry, and injustice. A strategic victory in Oklahoma City, she correctly reasoned, would have an important effect upon other parts of the state, and any success would help condition the white community for even greater changes. After much preparation, Luper and her NAACP Youth Council were ready to act.

When white segregated eating establishments failed upon request to change their policies of segregation, Luper struck at stores in downtown Oklahoma City. In August 1958, the Youth Council conducted a “sit and wait” demonstration against Katz drugstore. Though sit-ins had occurred elsewhere in the late 1940s and 1950s, this was the first demonstration of this kind to involve youth. The thirteen original participants in this historic event in Oklahoma ranged from six to sixteen years of age. Luper had taught them well about nonviolence and about their major mission. Whites experienced shock when the well-dressed young blacks took their seats and requested food to eat within the establishment, not “to take out,” as had often been the custom in many businesses which were segregated. Some whites became angry when the children persisted in their demonstration against Katz, but after days of protest the drugstore changed its policy—not just in Oklahoma, but in Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa, too. Within the next year a few other stores gave blacks service, including the S.H. Kress Company. Much hard-core resistance, nevertheless, remained. Luper intensified her attack with greater media coverage of the sit-ins, and as the national movement placed more emphasis on civil rights activity. Moreover, as young blacks saw their friends express their bravery by sitting at a counter or standing in a picket line, they became more inclined to “do something for freedom.” Fired by the example in Oklahoma City, demonstrations took place in a few other Oklahoma cities. Clara Luper had been right about the success and impact of a sit-in in the state’s capital.

Clara Luper continued her work with youth and civil rights, both as a teacher and with the NAACP. She was a leader in the fight to integrate Oklahoma’s public schools and helped to organize the Oklahoma City sanitation workers’ strike. She has now retired from teaching but continues to be active for civil rights causes. She still works with the OKC NAACP Youth Council as an advisor.

Jim Thorpe is Dead on West Coast at 64

He should have been in more than one Hall of Fame. Children should read about him school. But this remarkable athlete, master of many sports, was destined to receive the back of the hand from a cruel and insensitive society. His Sac and Fox Indian ancestors were uprooted from their native lands in Iowa by greedy white neighbors. With the aid of blue-coated U.S. troops, they were driven into Kansas and finally herded to an arid territory in Oklahoma. It was in to this grim, hopeless atmosphere that Jim Thorpe was born on May 28, 1888 on of 19 children, son of a white farmer and Indian mother. But Thorpe’s rare athletic skills saved him from a bleak existence.

His mother gave him the Indian tribal name Wa-Tho-Huck, or Bright Path. Official records, however, list him as James Francis Thorpe. Young Jim was sent to the Haskell Indian School at Lawrence, KS, and then to the Carlisle School at Carlisle, PA. He showed no particular interest in college athletics until Pop Warner persuaded him to come out for football. That was in the fall of 1907 and he played as a substitute. The next year he became a regular and attracted attention as a ball-carrier and kicker. He weighed around 178 pounds.

Hero of the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm and a towering football figure, Jim Thorpe was probably the greatest natural athlete the world had seen in modern times. King Gustaf V of Sweden said to the black-haired Sac and Fox Indian as he stood before the royal box, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.” That was after Thorpe almost single-handedly gained the Olympic honors for the United States, setting a point-total record never before approached and dominating the games as no other figure. Thorpe came back from Stockholm with $50,000 worth of trophies. The included a Viking ship presented to him by the Czar of Russia, and gifts from King Gustaf.

A month later the new American sports idol was toppled from his high pedestal when the Amateur Athletic Union filed charges of professionalism against him, accusing him of receiving pay for playing summer baseball with the Rocky Mount Club in the Eastern Carolina League. The amount of money was negligible, helping to tide him over at school, but the American Olympic Committee offered its apologies and sent back the gifts and medals lavished upon the young man to whom President Theodore Roosevelt had cabled long messages of congratulations.

Thorpe’s plea was that he was just an innocent Indian kid who was unaware of any wrongdoing. The medals were forwarded to the runners-up in the pentathlon and decathlon events at Stockholm. Thorpe had won four of the five events in the Pentathlon and finished third in the other, a record unequaled to this day, and in the decathlon he scored 8,412 out of a possible 10,000 points, also unequaled.

Thorpe’s decathlon feats in the Olympics have since been surpassed by Bob Mathias, who won the event for the second straight time last year. However, another Olympic great—Finland’s Paavo Nurmi—declared that “Jim Thorpe could still beat them all.” Even if Thorpe never could beat Mathias in his prime, most experts still place the Indian ahead as an all around athlete. In 1950 Thorpe’s athletic prowess won for him selection as the greatest athlete of the twentieth century and the greatest football player in an Associated Press poll of sports writers and broadcasters.

Before leaping into world-wide fame as the star of the Olympics, Thorpe had become a national sports figure through his deeds on the gridiron as a member of the famous Carlisle Indians football teams coached by Glenn S. “Pop” Warner. (Carlisle was an all-Indian college in Pennsylvania.) In 1911 and 1912 he was chose as halfback on Walter Camp’s All-American teams.

Thorpe played professional football for almost fifteen years and in both his prime at Carlisle and as a pro he never had to leave the field because of an injury, such was his courage and stamina. In his last year at the Indian school he won letters in five major sports, and he was proficient in others. His activities included running, jumping, football, lacrosse, boxing, basketball, hockey, archery, rifle shooting, canoeing, handball, swimming, and skating.
His Record as Track Athlete
He could run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat, the 220 in 21.8, the 440 in 50.8, the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35, the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds, and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds. He broad-jumped 23 feet 6 inches and high-jumped 6 feet 5 inches. He pole-vaulted 11 feet, put the shot 47 feet 9 inches, and threw the javelin 163 feet, the hammer 140 feet, and the discus 136 feet.
Career at Carlisle
In the spring of 1908 Jim made the track team. Jumping and hurdling were his specialties. By the time he finished his five-year term at Carlisle in the spring of 1909 he had developed into a track star.

In 1911 he won All-American honors in football, as he did in 1912 also, performing sensationally against Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Army, Syracuse, and Penn State. Against Harvard in 1911 Thorpe ran 70 yards in nine plays for a touchdown and kicked three field goals from back of the 40-yard line.

President Eisenhower can attest to Thorpe’s hitting power. When the general was a cadet at the United States Military Academy, the Army team played Carlisle, the Indians winning, 27- to 6. Thorpe stopped General Eisenhower time after time, and in the process the general injured his knee and never played again.
One-Man Track Team
In his track days Carlisle was booked to meet the Lafayette team at Easton. A welcoming committee was puzzled when only two Indians got off the train.

“Where’s your team?” they asked.

“This is the team,” Thorpe replied.

“Only two of you?”

“Only one,” Jim said with a smile. “This fellow’s the manager.”
Baseball Player
Thorpe played baseball with the New York Giants baseball team for six years and briefly for Cincinnati as outfielder. He finished his career with three years in the minors, hitting over 300.

Thorpe was back in the news in 1943, when the Oklahoma Legislature adopted a resolution that the A.A.U. be petitioned to reinstate Thorpe’s Olympic records, but no action was taken. In February 1952, a group in Congress made another unsuccessful attempt to have the medals restored. After an operation for cancer of the lip in the preceding November, he had been discovered to be nearly penniless and groups throughout the country raised thousands of dollars for him.

In the summer of 1949, Warner Brothers started work on a motion picture entitled “Jim Thorpe—All American,” with Burt Lancaster in the athlete’s role. The picture reached Broadway in the summer of 1951.
Thirty years after his death, Thorpe’s medals finally were restored, thanks to a Swedish researcher who discovered a loophole in the Olympic Charter that specified that protests of professionalism had to be made within 30 days of the Games. The return of the medals brought small solace to his family. The Olympic committee, however, never restored his records.
The Alcatraz Indian Occupation

By Dr. Troy Johnson⁴⁹

European discovery and exploration of the San Francisco Bay Area and its islands began in 1542 and culminated with the mapping of the bay in 1775. These Early visitors to the Bay Area, however, were preceded 10,000 to 20,000 years earlier by the native people indigenous to the area. Prior to the coming of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers, over 10,000 indigenous people, later to be called the Ohlone (a Miwok Indian word meaning "western people"), lived in the coastal area between Point Sur and the San Francisco Bay.

Early use of Alcatraz Island by the indigenous people is difficult to reconstruct, as most tribal and village history was recorded and passed down generation-to-generation as an oral history of the people. A large portion of this oral history has been lost as a result of the huge reduction of the California Indian population following European contact and exploration. Based on oral history it appears that Alcatraz was used as a place of isolation for tribal members who had violated a tribal law or taboo, as a camping spot, an area for gathering foods, especially bird eggs and sea-life, and that Alcatraz was utilized also as a hiding place for many Indians attempting to escape from the California Mission system.

Once Alcatraz Island became a prison, both military prisoners and civilians were incarcerated on the island. Among these were many American Indians. The largest single group of Indian prisoners sentenced to confinement on Alcatraz occurred in January 1895 when the U.S. government arrested, tried, and shipped nineteen Moqui Hopi to Alcatraz Island. Indian people continued to be confined as prisoners in the disciplinary barracks on the island through the remainder of the 1800s and the early 1900s.

November 9, 1969

On this day, Indian people once again came to Alcatraz Island when Richard Oakes, a Mohawk Indian, and a group of Indian supporters set out in a chartered boat, the Monte Cristo, to symbolically claim the island for the Indian people. On November 20, 1969, this symbolic occupation turned into a full-scale occupation which lasted until June 11, 1971.

The November 9, 1969 occupation was planned by Richard Oakes, a group of Indian students, and a group of urban Indians from the Bay Area. Since many different tribes were represented, the name "Indians of All Tribes" was adopted for the group. They claimed the island in the name of Indians of all tribes and left the island to return later that same evening. In meetings following the November 9th occupation, Oakes and his fellow American Indian students realized that a prolonged occupation was possible. Oakes visited the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA where he recruited Indian students for what would become the longest prolonged occupation of a federal facility by Indian people to this very day. Eighty Indian students from UCLA were among the approximately 100 Indian people who occupied Alcatraz Island.

It is important to remember that the occupation force was made up initially of young urban Indian college students. And the most inspirational person was Richard Oakes. Oakes is described by most of those as handsome, charismatic, a talented orator, and a natural leader. Oakes was the most knowledgeable about the landings and the most often sought out and identified as the leader, the Chief, the mayor of Alcatraz.

Government “Negotiations”

Once the occupiers had established themselves on the island, organization began immediately. An elected council was put into place and everyone on the island had a job; security, sanitation, day-care, school, housing, cooking, laundry, and all decisions were made by unanimous consent of the people.

The federal government initially insisted that the Indian people leave the island, placed an ineffective barricade around the island, and eventually agreed to demands by the Indian council that formal negotiations be held. From the Indians side, the negotiations were fixed. They wanted the deed to the island; they wanted to establish an Indian university, a cultural center, and a museum. The government negotiators insisted that the occupiers could have none of these and insisted that they leave the island.

By early 1970 the Indian organization began to fall into disarray. Two groups rose in opposition to Richard Oakes and as the Indian students began returning to school in January 1970, Indian people from the urban areas and from reservations who had not been involved in the initial occupation replaced them. Additionally, many non-Indians now began taking up residency on the island, many from the San Francisco hippie and drug culture. The final blow to the organized leadership occurred on January 5, 1970, when Oakes's 13-year-old stepdaughter fell three floors down a stairwell to her death. Following Yvonne's death, Oakes left the island and the two competing groups maneuvered back and forth for leadership on the island.

The federal government responded to the occupation by adopting a position of non-interference. The FBI was directed to remain clear of the island. The Coast Guard was directed not to interfere, and the Government Services Administration (GSA) was instructed not to remove the Indians from the island. While it appeared to those on the island that negotiations were actually taking place, in fact, the federal government was playing a waiting game, hoping that support for the occupation would subside and those on the island would elect to end the occupation. At one point, secret negotiations were held where the occupiers were offered a portion of Fort Miley, in San Francisco, as an alternative site to Alcatraz Island. By this time, mid-1970, however, those on the island had become so entrenched that nothing less than full title to the island and the establishing of a university and cultural center, would suffice.

In the meantime, the government shut off all electrical power, and removed the water barge which had provided fresh water to the occupiers. Three days following the removal of the water barge, a fire broke out on the island. Several historic buildings were destroyed. The government blamed the Indians; the Indians blamed undercover government infiltrators trying to turn non-Indian support against them.

The new population on the island became a problem as time passed. The daily reports from the government caretaker on the island as well as testimony from the remaining original occupiers complain of the open use of drugs, fighting over authority, and general disarray of the leadership. An egalitarian form of government was supposed to prevail, yet no leadership was visible with which the government could negotiate.

The occupation continued on into 1971 with various new problems emerging for the Indian occupiers. In an attempt to raise money to buy food, they allegedly began stripping copper wiring and copper tubing from the buildings and selling it as scrap metal. Three of the occupiers were arrested, tried and found guilt of selling some 600lbs of copper. In early 1971, the press, which had been largely sympathetic to this point, turned against them and began publishing stories of alleged beatings and assaults; one case of assault was prosecuted. Soon, little support could be found.
All Things Must Come to an End
In January 1971, two oil tankers collided in the entrance to the San Francisco Bay. Though it was acknowledged that the lack of an Alcatraz light or foghorn played no part in the collision, it was enough to push the federal government into action. President Nixon gave the go ahead to develop a removal plan—to take place when the smallest number of people were on the island and to use as little force as possible.

On June 10, 1971, armed federal marshals, FBI agents, and Special Forces police swarmed the island and removed five women, four children, and six unarmed Indian men. The occupation was over.

The success or failure of the occupation should not be judged by whether the demands of the occupiers were realized. The underlying goals of the Indians on Alcatraz were to awaken the American public to the reality of the plight of the first Americans and to assert the need for Indian self-determination. As a result of the occupation, whether directly or indirectly, the official government policy of termination of Indian tribes was ended and a policy of Indian self-determination became the official US government policy.

During the period the occupiers were on Alcatraz Island, President Nixon returned Blue Lake and 48,000 acres of land to the Taos Indians. Occupied lands near Davis California would become home to a Native American university. The occupation of Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington, D.C. would lead to the hiring of Native American's to work in the federal agency that had such a great effect on their lives.

Alcatraz may have been lost, but the occupation gave birth to a political movement which continues to today.

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