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History has it that Chief Okemah of the Kickapoo tribe was the first person to occupy the location now called Okemah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah about the same time period as my dad (your grandpa Holland) was born in Arkansas and I was born about the same time as Woody\u2019s son Arlo! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the only similarities between my family and Woody Guthrie! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was growing up I never heard of Woody Guthrie! Matter of fact I don\u2019t recall hearing of or discussing Woody Guthrie until I return from Vietnam and the anti-war crowds we\u2019re beginning to idolize Woody as some kind of hobo hero.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n People in Okemah seldom talked about Woody Guthrie because they consider him and his dad communist! Most who didn\u2019t like him, didn\u2019t like him because he was a communist! Those who were racist ONLY liked him because he and his family were racist also, especially against black people and brown people. So basically, most around Okemah didn\u2019t like him or his family! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Okies saw most people one of three ways. 1) a doer, 2) a loafer, or 3) a go getter. A doer did work, a loafer avoided work, and a go getter would take his wife to work then \u2018go get her\u2019. \uf04a<\/p>\n\n\n\n After researching his life story for \u2018My Life Story\u2019 I understand why Okemaheins\u2019 seldom talked about Woody but in all fairness, he was very vocal about his dislike of fascism and his involvement in social issues might have shed some positive light on the plight of migrant workers in California. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I gotta admit much of what I\u2019m going to say about Woody I got from Woody Guthrie Wikipedia!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s what Woody himself wrote about Okemah in an excerpt from \u201cPastures of Plenty\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOkemah was one of the singingest, square dancingest, drinkingest, yellingest, preachingest, walkingest, talkingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest, bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club and razor carryingest of our ranch towns and farm towns, because it blossomed out into one of our first Oil Boom Towns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Woody\u2019s dad was an unsuccessful real estate investor around Okemah! Woody was a \u2018Loafer\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When Woody was 14, Nora (Woodys mother) was committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane. At the time his father Charley was living and working in Pampa, Texas, to repay debts from unsuccessful real estate deals around Okemah. Woody and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma; they relied on their eldest brother Roy for support. The 14-year-old Woody worked odd jobs around Okemah, begging meals and sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends. Much like many of my cousins (the Guinns) on my Moms side of the family did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Generally speaking, no one ever really talked about him in any positive or good way until many years after his parents had died and he had left Oklahoma and went to California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charles Guthrie was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up to 30 plots of land in Okfuskee County. He was actively involved in Oklahoma politics and was a conservative Democratic candidate for office in the county. Charles Guthrie was reportedly involved in the 1911 lynching of Laura and L. D. Nelson. (Woody Guthrie wrote three songs about the event in the 1960s. He said that his father, Charles, became a member of the Ku Klux Klan during its revived beginning in 1915.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n After his father moved to Pampa Texas woody lived with various families in Okemah from 1927 to 1929 but he was lazy and wouldn\u2019t help out the families he bummed off of because he wanted to sing and play the guitar! <\/p>\n\n\n\n To the hard-working farmers around Okemah Woody was considered a freeloader and not to be trusted! <\/p>\n\n\n\n The blacks didn\u2019t like him because he and his father were racist and like I said the whites didn\u2019t like him because he and his dad were professed communist and the Indians didn\u2019t like him because he and his family totally ignored them as a people and as a culture! <\/p>\n\n\n\n When he went to California he quickly hooked up with migrant workers & protesters who just as quickly label him a hypocrite looking for a cause to belong to and to make a name for himself!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I realize what I\u2019m saying about Woody imputes bad motives to him and his supporting migrant protesters in California but that\u2019s just the way most people at the time felt and many In both California and Oklahoma (including Okemah) probably still do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In California Woody decided to rebrand himself as a socialist and not a communist! He wanted to be the hobo singer and songwriter even though he was far from being a hobo! But the rebranding efforts paid off! <\/p>\n\n\n\n He would name drop old black blues artist and he attached himself to migrant workers in California which earned him a lot of notoriety among the activist in his day! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Woody liked to talk about the time he spent in Tijuana Mexico but actually he was only there for less than a month and it didn\u2019t work out for him and he went back into California but it gave him sympathy among those fighting for the migrant workers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the migrant workers knew he never worked a day in his life but they were really being treated unfairly so they allowed him to champion their cause! To his credit he was one of the first few white men to join with them in their protest! Which obviously didn\u2019t hurt their cause and it also obviously didn\u2019t help it much either. The problems & abuse suffered by migrant workers continues down to this day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that was a smart move on his part because it definitely helped him as a so-called freedom fighter and songwriter even if it didn\u2019t help the cause he claimed to fight for! Such tactics are still popular today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To most people in Okemah his songs hard to listen to, hard to understand, and even harder to dance to!<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of them would admit that he made his name as an artist. Most felt he made his name as an activist who happened to also sing and write songs!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even the few who liked the song \u2018this land is your land\u2019, when they found out who wrote it and who sang it, that was it and they turned off the radio!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, many down to this day consider Woody the father of \u2018popular cause leeches\u2019 (my term) who attach themselves to minorities & the downtrodden for selfish reasons\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Okies who went to California during the dust bowl surenuff\u2019 didn\u2019t like him because he was a big advocate for the migrant workers and they competed with the same job the Okies did in California picking fruit and picking cotton and working in the orchards and farms<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okies that would return to Oklahoma (including Okemah) after the dust bowl commented that all they knew about Woody was that he sponged off of people while he was in California trying to make a name as a hobo activist singer and song writer and the more popular he got, the better he got at portraying himself as the passive freewheeling hobo activist! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Time changes a lot of things. It was mainly after his death that the name Woody Guthrie gained fame. He died in 1967 the same year your mom and i got married. He was only 55 years old. He died of Huntington’s disease but before he died in a relatively brief creative life he was incredibly productive with countless songs and a tremendous volume of letters bearing his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, after his death, that very productive creativity yielded the results he had hoped for. For example, the song \u2018Hobo Lullaby\u2019 he released in 1944 moved people to believe he actually was a Hobo! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Somehow through sheer willpower he became known as the hobo, songwriter, musician, writer, and political activist he told everyone who would give him a listening ear that he was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As his fame grew Okemah leaders began to slowly embrace his fame and touted him as a native son\u2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n