Trailblazing Women: Angie Debo, Historian, Part 2

Angie & Mother Lina

To see Part 1, go here.

Angie Debo craved education and dove right in between chores at home where her mother worked with her to teach her how to keep a home and farm animals while Edwin helped his father in the fields. The pair made the two-mile trek through pastures to get to school for the few months each year it was in operation. The quality of the teaching varied widely in the one-room schoolhouse, depending on what teacher blew through, but it was critical to Angie that she attend. In these early days of school, she heard some of the history of the native people's which would sew the seeds of her primary interest many years later. Students studied The kids got through the eighth grade, which was as far as they could go until a high school was built. She passed her territorial examination.

In 1905, Marshall opened their new high school which only provided a 9th grade. She finished that and waited again.

Having from a young age decided that she would not marry and have children, but instead a career, a friend from youth recounted one story of Angie having shown an interest in a fellow student, but she did not pursue it and the boy finally moved on. She would apparently have no beaus during her lifetime.

Not idle while waiting to continue her education, she read the newspapers, soaking up everything she could learn about the greater world there and by listening to the men in town talking politics. But, with nowhere to go from there, she started teaching in the rural schools in Logan and Garfield Counties. At that time, all you had to have done is complete 8th grade and pass that territorial exam. She apparently liked the $33 she earned each month but it wasn't an easy job. She moved from school to school over the next bit of time, but firmly established class control in each location despite her diminutive size and lack of experience.

Finally, in 1910, Marshall added the final high school grades. She spent the next three years studying hard and in 1913 was one of nine students who graduated from the first graduating class of Marshall High School. She was by then 23 years old.

For the next two years, she continued to teach in the rural schools, but then attended the University of Oklahoma, studying history under EE Dale, who taught the first history course on the American Indian. After graduating in 1918, she taught high school for five more years until she could afford to earn her master's degree at the University of Chicago which she wrapped up in 1924.

While working on her doctorate, she taught almost ten years at West Texas Teacher's College. Her dissertation was described like this:

"At a time when most historians of American Indians wrote from a non-Indian perspective based largely on government documents, she utilized these sources but also incorporated oral history, tribal records, and anthropological studies. At the time, she did not think of her treatment as something new, but later researchers point to The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic(1934) as one of the early examples of an ethnohistorical approach. Her book received the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association as the most important contribution to studies in American history in 1934."

Oklahoma Historical Society 2009

Edwin and Ida

When Angie left WTTC, she moved back to Marshall to live with her parents. While there, she wrote several more books on Indian history and issues. It was also during this time, her beloved brother Edwin developed Hodgkin's disease. Only married three years to Ida Henneke, he died in 1931, having been cared for by his mother, sister, and wife.

The 1930s and 1940s led to working on two WPA projects. The first was in 1937 and was related to the native tribes in oral history and the other related to the history of Oklahoma, which she worked on in 1940. Her father died in 1944. In the 1950s, she worked as a researcher and librarian at was once Oklahoma A&M.  Angie wrote a total of nine history books, co-authored one, and edited three more, including her final book, "Geronimo," in 1976. Her beloved mother Lina, with whom she was also exceptionally close, died in 1954.

Her later years included lots of writing, from articles to book to periodicals. She also became involved in the civil rights movement and the ACLU on behalf of Indian causes.

"With her lifelong commitment to social justice, Debo served on the Oklahoma board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1985 Oklahoma honored her work by placing her portrait in the Rotunda of the State Capitol. In 1988, at age ninety-eight, Angie Debo received the Award for Scholarly Distinction from the American Historical Association. She died two weeks later on February 21, 1988."

Oklahoma Historical Society 2009.

Angie, 1935

Angie Debo died 21 Feb 1988 in Enid, Oklahoma. All of Angie's papers and records were donated to Oklahoma State University. I highly recommend you visit the website and also read Shirley Leckie's book on Angie as a great source of information regarding the entire Alfred Cooper family, including Angie.

Sources:
Shirley A. Leckie, Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000).
Patricia Loughlin, Hidden Treasures of the American West: Muriel H. Wright, Angie Debo and Alice Marriott (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005).
Blackburn, Bob L. "Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame - Angie Debo," The Chronicles of Oklahoma 72, no. 4 (Winter 1994-95): 456-59.
Oklahoma Historical Society, Debo, Angie Elbertha (1890-1988), 2009, http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=DE002
Oklahoma State University, The Angie Debo Collection, 2016, http://info.library.okstate.edu/debo