Volume 16 , Issue 13

Catherine Ann "Kate" Barnard (1875-1930)

Kate Barnard was the first woman to be elected as a state official in Oklahoma, and the United States in 1907. Barnard served as the first Oklahoma Commissioner of Charities and Corrections for two four year terms. Click this link to read more about Catharine "Kate" Barnard, Saint Kate. Also, see information online at this link: A Standard History of Oklahoma: An Authentic Narrative of its Development, Volume 3, by Joseph Bradfield Thoburn.

Kate was born in Geneva, Nebraska, on 23 May 1875, to John P. and Rachel Sheill Barnard. Her mother died when she was two and the family was living in Kansas. Kate was raised by relatives until 1891 when she moved to Newalla, Oklahoma, where her father was living. Kate attended St. Joseph's Academy and over to Oklahoma City in 1895 to become a teacher.

Miss Barnard was involved in aid and charity work in Oklahoma City and was the head of the union-label organization in Oklahoma. She also participated in the Farm Labor meetings of 1906 in Shawnee which drafted the Shawnee Demands that later formed the basis of the soon to be drafted Oklahoma state constitution.

Miss Barnard was a key player in the enactment of the compulsory education laws, state support of poor widows dependent on their children's earnings, and statutes implementing the constitutional ban on child labor.

Miss Barnard was an advocate for working Oklahomans through the work she did in securing legislation aimed at eradicating unsafe working conditions and the blacklist of union members. She was one of the few public officials who dared to cry out against the abuse of Native American children. Barnard relied on her stirring speeches to reach the public and convoke the political powers of the need for increased federal protection of all Five Tribes' members.

Barnard's most important action may have been when she uncovered the abusive treatment of Oklahoma prisoners who were being held in Kansas prisons user contract, which included forced labor in coal mines and torture. Barnard's pressure on Oklahoma's first Governor Charles N. Haskell, resulted in the return of the prisoners to Oklahoma and the construction of the Oklahoma state penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma.

Miss Kate Barnard's political career ended during her second term in office, after she began to advocate on behalf of Indian wards who were being cheated out of their land as a result of grafting. Miss Barnard's work on behalf of Indian children raised the ire of William H. Murray and other prominent Oklahoma businessmen and officials who convinced the state legislature to defund her office. It was in Wilma Mankiller's 1993 book, Mankiller, A Chief and Her People, on page 173 she quotes Barnard:

"I have been compelled to see orphans robbed, starved, and burned for money. I have named the men and accused them and furnished the records and affidavits to convict them, but with no result. I decided long ago that Oklahoma had no citizen who cared whether or not an orphan is robbed or starved or killed - because his dead claim is easier to handle than if he were alive."   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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