During the nineteenth century, the availability of free public land in Oklahoma played a major role in attracting immigrants to the United States from Europe. The building of railroads and the development of coal mines and oil fields brought additional waves of immigrants.
During the nineteenth century, poverty, harsh living conditions, and religious persecution caused vast numbers of Europeans to immigrate to the United States. Many settled in the major cities of the East and Midwest and in the coal mining regions of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Others went to the agricultural areas of the Midwest and Great Plains where they successfully established farms. By the late nineteenth century, European immigrants, seeking to improve their lives, were still coming to the United States; however, they found a lack of both jobs and land in the east and the Midwest. The best land in the Great Plains had also been claimed. In April of 1889, Oklahoma, which at that time was administratively an Indian territory of the United States, was opened for white settlement, and the first great “land run” took place that same year. A large majority of the new immigrants sought land and a new life in the territory.
Many of Oklahoma’s first foreign immigrants were
Around the same time the first German immigrants were arriving, many
During the early years of the twentieth century, peasant farmers from
Land
Among
Mexican
After World War II, the numbers of Mexicans immigrating to Oklahoma increased, but the first truly large wave of Mexican immigration did not occur until the last two decades of the twentieth century. Mexicans spread throughout the state, working primarily as laborers on farms, in factories, in construction, and as restaurant employees. By the early twenty-first century, Mexican culture and the Spanish language played very visible and important roles in Oklahoma.
The first substantial number of Asians to enter Oklahoma were
Bicha, Karel D. The Czechs in Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Excellent and thorough coverage, discussing where Czechs have settled, their culture, and their role in the state’s agriculture. Franks, Kenny Arthur, and Paul F. Lambert. Oklahoma: The Land and Its People. Morris Plains, N.J.: Unicorn Publishing, 1994. Good discussion of where immigrant groups have settled in Oklahoma and what their lives in the state have been like. Luebke, Frederick C. Germans in the New World: Essays in the History of Immigration. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Particularly good for language issues and prejudices faced by Germans in Oklahoma. Portes, Alejandro, and Rubén G. Rumbaut. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 3d ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Good presentation of the life of immigrants in different social and economic situations. Also treats assimilation. Zolberg, Aristide. A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Excellent for its objective presentation of U.S. immigration policy and its changes. Good for Mexican immigration.
Coal industry
Czech and Slovakian immigrants
German immigrants
Homestead Act of 1862
Irish immigrants
Italian immigrants
Jewish immigrants
Railroads