page_title: Okie
hierarchical_section_title: Okie
caption_attribution_description: Rear view of an "Okie's" car, passing Amarillo, Texas heading west[1]
context_page_description: "Okie", in the most general sense, refers to a resident, native, or cultural descendant of Oklahoma, equating to Oklahoman. It is derived from the name of the state, similar to Arkie for a native of Arkansas. However, the term is most often used more specifically in a pejorative sense.
  Beginning in the 1920s in California, the term came to refer to very poor migrants from Oklahoma and nearby states coming to California looking for employment. The Dust Bowl and the "Okie" migration of the 1930s brought in over a million newly displaced people, many headed to the farm labor jobs advertised in the Central Valley of California.
  Dunbar-Ortiz argues that "Okie" denotes much more than being from Oklahoma. By 1950, four million individuals, or one quarter of all persons born in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri, lived outside the region, primarily in the West.
  Prominent Okies included folksinger/songwriter Woody Guthrie in the 1920s, and country musician Merle Haggard in the late 1960s and 1970s. Author John Steinbeck notably wrote about Okies moving west in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, which was filmed in 1940, directed by John Ford.
context_section_description: "Okie", in the most general sense, refers to a resident, native, or cultural descendant of Oklahoma, equating to  Oklahoman. It is derived from the name of the state, similar to Arkie for a native of Arkansas.  However, the term is most often used more specifically in a pejorative sense.
  Beginning in the 1920s in California, the term came to refer to very poor migrants from Oklahoma and nearby states coming to California looking for employment. The Dust Bowl and the "Okie" migration of the 1930s brought in over a million newly displaced people, many headed to the farm labor jobs advertised in the Central Valley of California.
  Dunbar-Ortiz (1998) argues that "Okie" denotes much more than being from Oklahoma.  By 1950, four million individuals, or one quarter of all persons born in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri, lived outside the region, primarily in the West.
  Prominent Okies included folksinger/songwriter Woody Guthrie in the 1920s, and country musician Merle Haggard in the late 1960s and 1970s.  Author John Steinbeck notably wrote about Okies moving west in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, which was filmed in 1940, directed by John Ford.
caption: Rear view of an Okie's car, passing through Amarillo, Texas, heading west, 1941
exif: {}