CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · History & Society

2nd Oklahoma Legislature

Meeting of the legiative branch of the government of Oklahoma

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ16973598 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Second Oklahoma Legislature was a meeting of the legislative branch of the government of Oklahoma, composed of the Oklahoma Senate and the Oklahoma House of Representatives, during the only term of Governor Charles Haskell. State legislators elected in 1908 met in the Guthrie City Hall Building from January 5 to March 12, 1909. The state legislature also met in special session from January 20 to March 19, 1910.

Oklahoma's first black state legislator, A. C. Hamlin, was among the new group of state legislators, but was limited to one term by a Jim Crow law passed by the legislature.

Dates of sessions

Regular session: January 5-March 12, 1909

Special session: January 20-March 19, 1910

Previous: 1st Legislature • Next: 3rd Legislature

Major legislation

Legislation enacted on March 6, 1909, created the Southeastern Normal School, which would later become Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Initially offering four years of high school and junior college, the school opened its doors to students on June 14, 1909.

Party composition

Senate

House of Representatives

Leadership

Senate

Lieutenant Governor George W. Bellamy continued to serve as the first President of the Senate, which gave him a tie-breaking vote and allowed him to serve as a presiding officer. J. C. Graham was elected as the second President pro tempore of the Oklahoma Senate, giving him the authority to organize the state senate and serve as a presiding officer.

House

Ben Wilson served as the second Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. He hailed from a town known as Cereal, which today is known as Banner, Oklahoma.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2nd Oklahoma Legislature” is meeting of the legiative branch of the government of Oklahoma. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Oklahoma, Legislature and Meeting, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1908, 1909, 1910—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Oklahoma, Legislature and Meeting is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “meeting of the legiative branch of the government of Oklahoma” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16973598. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1909 and 1910.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “2nd Oklahoma Legislature”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 2nd Oklahoma Legislature primary sources, 2nd Oklahoma Legislature archive and Oklahoma research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “2nd Oklahoma Legislature”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “2nd Oklahoma Legislature” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.