Question

UNLIKE the U.S. Constitution, the constitution of Oklahoma

Answer 1

On June 6, 1906, Congress passed the Oklahoma Enabling Act, providing for single statehood to be formed from Oklahoma and Indian territories. On November 6 of that year elections were held in both territories for delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Each territory elected 55 delegates, and 2 additional delegates were elected from the Osage Nation. Of the 112 delegates, 99 were Democrats (the "ninety and nine"), 12 were Republicans (the "twelve apostles"), and the remaining delegate was an independent (the "renegade"). The delegates elected colorful William H. "Alfalfa Bill" Murray as president. He was subsequently elected speaker of the house in the First Legislature and was elected governor in 1930.

The Constitutional Convention began in Guthrie on November 20, 1906, and adjourned on March 15, 1907. There were two additional week-long sessions to finish the document. The date set for placing the document before the voters was September 17, 1907 (symbolically chosen because September 17 was when the drafters of the U.S. Constitution had adjourned their convention in 1787).

William Jennings Bryan did come to the state to encourage adoption of the proposed constitution. Having early on admonished the convention in his letter to rely on earlier state constitutions to produce the best constitution ever written, he publicly announced that he thought they had, in fact, done just that. The citizens of the two territories seemed to agree; 71 percent voted for its adoption. (The voters also overwhelmingly elected Democrats to fill positions created by the constitution.) On November 16, 1907, Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, after signing the proper papers, proclaimed that "Oklahoma is now a state." While there was little that was new in the Oklahoma Constitution, the members of the convention followed Bryan's advice and consulted numerous state constitutions, the proceedings of the Sequoyah Convention, and the U.S. Constitution in producing a document that was innovative in the sense that so many progressive provisions were included.