Mixed Race Studies

Oklahoma cop gets life for sex crimes against the poor

USA Today
2016-01-21

Melanie Eversley, Breaking News Reporter

Former officer Daniel Holtzclaw was sentenced to 263 years in prison after he was convicted in December of 18 counts, including first-degree rape.

A former Oklahoma City police officer was sentenced Thursday to spend the rest of his life in prison after his conviction for raping and sexually abusing women in a low-income neighborhood while on the beat.

District Judge Timothy Henderson agreed with an earlier court recommendation and sentenced Daniel Holtzclaw to 263 years in prison for the attacks on black women in a low-income neighborhood between 2013 and 2014. Holtclaw, 29, had been charged with 36 counts.

After a six-week trial, a jury on Dec. 10 found Holtzclaw guilty of 18 counts. The youngest victim was 17 at the time of her attack and testified that the incident took place on her mother’s front porch, according to The Oklahoman.

The judge denied a request for a new trial made by Scott Adams, Holtzclaw’s defense attorney, who maintained that Holtzclaw was denied a fair trial because the prosecution made deliberate violations and misrepresentations in discovery.

The case drew national attention because of the race of the victims. Holtzclaw is half-white and half-Asian…

Read the entire article here.

Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw found guilty of rape

Cable News Network (CNN)
2015-12-10

Michael Martinez, Newsdesk Editor & Writer

Gigi Mann

(CNN) A jury found former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw guilty Thursday of some of the most serious charges against him, including sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy and rape.

Holtzclaw faced 36 counts. He was found guilty on 18.

The former officer cried openly in the courtroom and rocked in his chair as the verdict was being read. Jurors deliberated for more than 40 hours over four days.

The Oklahoma City Police Department welcomed the verdict. “We are satisfied with the jury’s decision and firmly believe justice was served,” it said.

Sentencing is set for next month.

His trial touched upon the explosive intersection of race, policing and justice in America.

Holtzclaw, whose father is white and mother Japanese, was accused of assaulting or raping 13 women, all black, while he was on the job. Court records identify his race as “Asian or Pacific Islander.”

The jury was all-white, composed of eight men and four women…

Read the entire article here.

G.O.P. Hopeful Finds Tribal Tie Cuts Both Ways

The New York Times
2014-05-03

Jonathan Martin, National Political Correspondent

BARTLESVILLE, Okla. — T. W. Shannon will be Oklahoma’s first black senator if he wins the Republican nomination and is elected this November, but the quiet campaign stirring here about Mr. Shannon’s racial loyalties is not aimed at the African-American branch of his family tree.

Mr. Shannon, whose first name is Tahrohon, is a member of the Chickasaw Nation, the most influential tribe in a state where Native Americans are not merely the inheritors of a poignant history but also collectively constitute the state’s largest nongovernment employer outside of Walmart.

Most of those jobs are connected to Oklahoma’s 110-and-counting casinos, which are becoming as familiar here as oil derricks. Yet the gambling revenue that has showered millions on some of the state’s Native Americans has also bred resentment over the tribes’ expanding footprint. Now, as Mr. Shannon vies to make history, he has become both the political beneficiary of the tribes’ newfound wealth and a target for complaints about Native American sovereignty and possible competing loyalties…

Read the entire article here.

Validity of Infant Race/Ethnicity from Birth Certificates in the Context of U.S. Demographic Change

Health Services Research
Volume 49, Issue 1 (February 2014)
pages 249–267
DOI: 10.1111/1475-6773.12083

Lisa Reyes Mason, Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Yunju Nam, Associate Professor of Social Work
State University of New York, Buffalo

Youngmi Kim, Assistant Professor of Social Work
Virginia Commonwealth University

Objective

To compare infant race/ethnicity based on birth certificates with parent report of infant race/ethnicity in a survey.

Data Sources

The 2007 Oklahoma birth certificates and SEED for Oklahoma Kids baseline survey.

Study Design

Using sensitivity scores and positive predictive values, we examined consistency of infant race/ethnicity across two data sources (N = 2,663).

Data Collection/Extraction Methods

We compared conventional measures of infant race/ethnicity from birth certificate and survey data. We also tested alternative measures that allow biracial classification, determined from parental information on the infant’s birth certificate or parental survey report.

Principal Findings

Sensitivity of conventional measures is highest for whites and African Americans and lowest for Hispanics; positive predictive value is highest for Hispanics and African Americans and lowest for American Indians. Alternative measures improve values among whites but yield mostly low values among minority and biracial groups.

Conclusions

Health disparities research should consider the source and validity of infant race/ethnicity data when creating sampling frames or designing studies that target infants by race/ethnicity. The common practice of assigning the maternal race/ethnicity as infant race/ethnicity should continue to be challenged.

Read or purchase the article here.

Intermarried-Whites in the Cherokee Nation Between the Years 1865 and 1887

Chronicles of Oklahoma
Volume 6, Number 3 (September, 1928)
pages 299-326

A. H. Murchison
Muskogee, Oklahoma

The Cherokee Indians in all their various treaties with the United States, numbering about twenty, obtained provisions whereby the United States was to exclude intruding white persons from their territory. We find, however, as far back as 1819 in their written laws¹ where the Cherokees made provision to take care of and authorize intermarriage. Data concerning the Cherokee Indians concerns Oklahoma and, as a number of the laws under which they lived in Indian Territory were formerly passed in the states of Tennessee and Georgia, it would be interesting to follow their intermarriage laws from the first written in the East to those passed in the West up to about the year 1869.

Several of the old Cherokee Laws and Resolutions start with the words, “Whereas, a law has been in existence for many years, but not committed to writing, that if * * * etc.,” This wording is not prefixed to any of the intermarriage laws and it is reasonable to deduct that prior to 1819 there had been no law on the matter.

This first law passed at “New Town, Cherokee Nation, November 2, 1819” follows:

“RESOLVED BY THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE AND COUNSEL, That any white man who shall hereafter take a Cherokee woman to wife be required to marry her legally by a minister of the gospel or other authorized person, after procuring license from the National Clerk for that purpose, before he shall be entitled and admitted to the privileges of citizenship, and in order to avoid imposition on the part of any white man,

RESOLVED, That any white man who shall marry a Cherokee woman the property of the woman so marry, shall not be subject to the disposal of her

husband, contrary to her consent, and any white man so married and parting from his wife without just provocation, shall forfeit and pay to his wife such sum or sums, as may be adjudged to her by the National Committee and Council for said breach of marriage, and be deprived of citizenship, and it is also resolved, that it shall not be lawful for any white man to have more than one wife, and it is also recommended that all others should also have but one wife hereafter.  By order of the National Committee.

Jno Ross, Pres’t N. Com.
Approved—Path (his x mark) Killer
Chas R. Hicks,
A. McCoy, Clerk.”….

Read the entire article here.

An Act to Prevent Amalgamation with Colored Persons

Chronicles of Oklahoma
Volume 6, No. 2 (June, 1928)
Interesting Ante-bellum Laws of the Cherokees, Now Oklahoma History
page 179

James W. Duncan
Tahlequah, Oklahoma

Be it enacted by the National Council, that intermarriage shall not be lawful between a free male or female citizen with any person of color, and the same is hereby prohibited, under the penalty of such corporal punishment as the courts may deem it necessary and proper to inflict, and which shall not exceed fifty stripes for every such offense.

Tahlequah, September 19, 1839.

John Ross, Principal Chief

Approved.

Play Could Begin Renaissance For Seminole Nation Culture

The Seminole Producer
Seminole, Oklahoma
2013-11-13
pages 1-2

Karen Anson, Senior Editor

IndianVoices.net contributed to this report

A play on the history of the Seminole Nation’s Freedmen is wrapping up in Los Angeles, but those involved hope it’s only the beginning of a movement.

The play, “the road weeps, the well runs dry,” will end Sunday in Los Angeles Theater Center.

It’s part of a “rolling premier,” being debuted in LA, as well as at the Pillsbury House Theater in Minneapolis, Minn; Perseverance Theater in Anchorage, Ala., and University of South Florida’s School of Theater and Dance.

“Surviving centuries of slavery, revolts and the Trail of Tears, a community of self-proclaimed Freedmen creates the first all-black U.S. town in Wewoka, Okla.,” states the press release about the play.

“The Freedmen (Black Seminoles and people of mixed origins) are rocked when the new religion and the old way come head to head and their former enslavers arrive to return them to the chains of bondage.

“Written in gorgeously cadenced language, utilizing elements of African American folk-lore and daring humor, ‘the road weeps, the well runs dry’ merges the myth, legends and history of the Seminole people.”

Playwright Marcus Gardley was awarded the 2011 PENN/Laura Pels award for mid-career playwright.

He holds masters of fine arts in playwriting from the Yale Drama School.

“Originally I set out to write a play about the first all-black town in the U.S., Wewoka, Okla.,” Gardley said.

“I had a special interest in the town because my grandmother was born there.

“In my research, I learned that Black Seminoles (people of African and Native American ancestry) actually incorporated the town…

…A third person involved in the program claims very close ties to Seminole County, Okla.

Phil “Pompey” Fixico spoke in a post program panel entitled “Exploring African American and Native American Spirituality.”

Fixico is featured in the Smithsonian Institute’s book and exhibit entitled “indiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas,” which will open its next show on Jan. 25 at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center in New York City.

For the exhibit, Fixico had to carefully document his heritage.

“I was a 52-year-old African-American, when I discovered that I was really an African-Native American,” Fixico said.

“This epiphany took place 14 years ago.”

Fixico’s found that he was the great-grandson of Caesar Bruner, an early leader of the Seminole Nation’s Freedman band…

Read the entire article here.

the road weeps, the well runs dry

Los Angeles Theater Center
514 South Spring Street
Los Angeles, California 90013
Telephone: 213.489.0994

2013-10-24 through 2013-11-17
Thursday-Saturday: 20:00 PT (Local Time)
Sunday: 15:00 PT (Local Time)

Written by Marcus Gardley
Directed by Shirley Jo Finney

Rolling World Premiere

Surviving centuries of slavery, revolts, and The Trail of Tears, a community of self-proclaimed Freedmen creates the first all-black U.S. town in Wewoka, Oklahoma. The Freedmen (Black Seminoles and people of mixed origins) are rocked when the new religion and the old way come head to head and their former enslavers arrive to return them to the chains of bondage.  Written in gorgeously cadenced language, utilizing elements of African American folklore and daring humor, the road weeps, the well runs dry merges the myth, legends and history of the Seminole people.

Previews: October 24 & 25

For more information, click here.

A Tale of Two Seminole Counties

Indian Voices
August 2013
page 7

Phil Fixico

Some coincidences can’t be ignored, like February the 26th, in both Florida’s and Oklahoma’s Seminole Counties. What does this date and these counties have in common. Trayvon Martin was killed on February 26th, 2012, in Seminole County, Florida. He was born on Feb. 5th, 1995, not in Seminole County, but that, is where his young life would tragically be ended.

My grandfather Pompey Bruner Fixico, on Feb. 14th, 1894, a hundred and one years before Trayvon’s birth, was born in Seminole County, Oklahoma. Eighty-seven years before Trayvon Martin’s death at the hands of an armed killer, who felt entitled to take Trayvon’s life, a similar scenario would end Pompey Bruner Fixico’s life on Feb. 26th, 1925, by someone else, who also didn’t hesitate. Pompey was a good deal older than Trayvon, he was 31 yrs. old and a WW1 Vet who had served his country in France during the War. He left a wife and four children, all younger than Trayvon’s 17 years, who by many, would be considered a child in a young man’s body. Pompey’s death took place, not far from the site of the “worst racial violence in American History”, “The Tulsa Race Riot”. The Riot had occurred 4 years earlier in 1921. Pompey Bruner’s (his father was Caesar Bruner) Draft Registration Card lists, his place of employment, in 1917, as the Brady Hotel, in Tulsa, Ok. It was owned by Mr. Tate Brady, the Grand Wizard of Oklahoma’s Ku Klux Klan, in that area. Grand Wizard Brady was reported to have had a hand in the, “Tulsa Race Riot”…

Read the entire article here.

The Mayes

Chronicles of Oklahoma
Volume 15, Number 1 (March, 1937)
pages 56-65

John Bartlett Meserve

The saga of the Cherokees, from the dawn of their arrival in the old Indian Territory down to the present, is emphatically one of constant change in their social, economic, and political lives. The influence of the adventurous white men who intermarried and cast their fortunes among the Indians was very pronounced. The mixed blood descendants of those soldiers of fortune in numerous instances achieved wealth, distinction, and leadership among the Indians and strongly influenced their tribal life. Numerous families of prominence grew up among the mixed blood Cherokee Indians. These families, while none the less proud of their Indian blood, were and are today, capable, in many instances, of tracing an ancestry back to some early white colonial ancestor of more or less renown. The intermarriage of these families provoked a sort of aristocracy in the social and intellectual life of the Cherokees and today among them are families of the highest culture and refinement. They may have been clannish to a degree, but probably inherited this trait from the Scotch with whom they were largely intermarried. The Cherokees have their “first families” and most charming they are indeed. It is worthy of note that the Cherokee Nation had no principal chief of the full blood after the days of the adoption of its constitution in 1827. Its political affairs, after that time, were managed by shrewd, mixed-blood politicians bearing white men’s names and speaking the white man’s language and frequently, with scarcely enough Indian blood to evidence itself in their features.

The Adair family was outstanding among the Cherokees. Two brothers, John and Edward Adair, Scotchmen whose father is reputed to have achieved much prominence in England during the reign of George III, came to America in 1770 and engaged in trading operations with the Indians and ultimately intermarried among the Cherokees in Tennessee. John Adair married Ga-hoga, a full blood Cherokee Indian woman of the Deer clan and his son, Walter Adair, known as Black Watt, was born on December 11, 1783 and became an active character among the Cherokees. Walter Adair married Rachel Thompson, a white woman, on May 13, 1804 and died in Georgia on January 20, 1835. Rachel Thompson was born in Georgia on December 24, 1786 and died near what is today Stilwell, Oklahoma, on April 22, 1876. Nancy Adair, a daughter of Walter and Rachel Adair was born in Georgia on October 7, 1808, married Samuel Mayes on January 22, 1824 and died in what is today Mayes County, Oklahoma on May 28, 1876 and is buried in the old family cemetery on the Wiley Mayes place some seven miles east of Pryor, Oklahoma…

Read the entire article here.