Going to the Nation: the idea of Oklahoma in early blues recordings

Abstract

This paper considers references to Oklahoma in blues recordings from 1924 to 1941, and the paradox that, although the reality of life for African-Americans in that state was little different from life in the Deep South, the recordings usually speak of migration to Oklahoma in optimistic terms. The notion that the Indian Nation (a.k.a. 'the Territory') had been a refuge for runaway slaves is rebutted, together with the conclusion that optimistic references in the blues preserve this idea as a collective memory. What is being recalled is rather the period between the Civil War and statehood (1907): the former slaves of Native Americans in Oklahoma became tribal members, gaining the civil and property rights accorded to tribes-people, and the black townships movement offered the prospect of autonomy and self-government on the frontier. Two songs which take a negative view of Oklahoma's Jim Crow reality are also considered.

‘Been to the Nation, Lord, but I Couldn't Stay There’

“…As Robert Warrior (2007) rejoins, 'Chad Smith could save us all the trouble by following some of the best examples of Cherokee history rather than the morally corrupting and exclusionary ones he and his 9 For more information about Charley Patton, see D. Evans (1987). For a discussion of blues songs that engage the idea of 'the Nation' and Indian Territory, see Smith (2007). Interior as defendants and asking the courts to rule that the Five Tribes Act of 1906 amended the 1866 Treaty to strip 'non-Indian' Freedmen of their rights to citizenship.…”