Oklahoma Voices: Women in OK's History /
Film Examines Tar Creek (Nov 18, 2007)
As Oklahoma begins its 101st year, we spend some time this week listening to one resident’s memories of what life was like in the state’s early days. We air excerpts of Vera Keating being interviewed by her daughter as part of the Metropolitan Library’s “Oklahoma Voices” oral history project, which is modeled after the national StoryCorps series that airs on NPR. To schedule your own interview with a friend or family member, call 414-9977. Appointments are currently being accepted for the mobile recording at the Ralph Ellison Public Library in Oklahoma City through the end of this month and the Choctaw Public Library next month.

Also on this week’s program, author and historic re-enactor Glenda Carlisle discusses the role women played in the founding of Oklahoma. Did you know, for example, that the first dentist in the state was a woman, or that men were forbidden from entering the all-women’s town of Bathsheba? Carlisle portrays one of the most significant women in early Oklahoma politics, Kate Barnard. Barnard was the first woman in the country to be elected to statewide office, before women even had the right to vote.

Then, in the second half of our program, we re-broadcast an interview Rich Fisher at Public Radio Tulsa conducted with James Payne, one of the filmmakers behind the documentary The Creek Runs Red, about the contaminated Tar Creek superfund site in Northeastern Oklahoma. It airs Tuesday, November 20th at 10pm on OETA and public television stations nationwide as part of PBS’s Independent Lens series.

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