2nd Oklahoma Legislature
Meeting of the legiative branch of the government of Oklahoma

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.