WAIT A MINUTE. WHAT ABOUT OKLAHOMA?
Oklahoma is OK, no doubt about it. It’s not just the postal abbreviation; it’s even proclaimed on license plates and T-shirts, and it’s the inspiration for business names in Oklahoma, everything from OK Paintless Dent Repairs in Duncan to OK Goat Coop, a goat farm in Tulsa.
And yet Oklahoma is a Johnny-come-lately to the world of OK. It could have played a role in the nineteenth- or early twentieth-century development of OK, but it was only in the mid-twentieth century when the connection between Oklahoma and OK became prominent.
The connection could have begun as long ago as 1866, when the name Oklahoma was proposed for the newly legislated Indian Territory that was the predecessor of the state. Chief Allen Wright of the Choctaw Indians suggested Oklahoma, literally “red people,” used in Choctaw to designate all Native Americans. This became the name of the territory in 1890 and remained the name when Oklahoma attained statehood in 1907. But it wasn’t abbreviated OK.
The distinctive word associated with Oklahoma in its early days was not OK but sooner. When the federal government opened the “Unassigned Lands” of Indian Territory with a land run across the territorial border at noon on April 22, 1889, the settlers who rushed in found that certain others had managed to arrive there sooner to stake their claims. Among the “sooners” were surveyors, railroad men, and officers of the law, who had legitimate reasons for being in the territory early and who took the opportunity to stake out the best 160-acre plots for themselves. A somewhat grudging admiration for their initiative led to Oklahoma eventually being labeled the Sooner State, even by Oklahomans. Better, perhaps, than the Hoosier State for Indiana, or the Sucker State for Illinois. For better or worse, it had nothing to do with OK.
Nor did the state’s motto, adopted by the Territorial Legislative Assembly in 1893. To this day Oklahoma’s Great Seal bears the legend “Labor Omnia Vincit,” not from an Indian language or from English but from the poet Virgil’s classical Latin, “Labor Conquers All.”
The state flag likewise makes no use of OK. Its first version was simply a white star with the number 46 (for the forty-sixth state) on a red background. The next and current flag has an Indian motif, a warrior’s shield crossed by a peace pipe, on a blue background with the name of the state beneath. No abbreviation.
And for many years the official postal abbreviation, as well as the one used in newspapers, was the four-letter Okla.
It took many years, and a song and ZIP code, to bring Oklahoma and OK together.
The song, of course, is from the 1943 musical Oklahoma! Written by Oscar Hammerstein II in his first collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers, the song was such a hit that it became the title of the musical, displacing the original Away We Go! The musical was based on a 1931 play by Jean Riggs, Green Grow the Rushes, but that play has nary an OK.
It’s not as if OK permeates the musical, however. It’s absent until the very end. But there it holds a strategic place, repeated three times at the end of the refrain of the final song. It’s the very last word as the curtain comes down and the audience begins to applaud. Here is that ending, with the spelling used in Oklahoma Statutes Title 25, Chapter 3, Section 94.3, when “Oklahoma!” was adopted as the official state song in 1953:
… We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say—Yeeow! A-yip-i-o-ee ay!
We’re only sayin’ You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma!
Oklahoma—O.K.
That popular musical was the first big step in making OK at home in Oklahoma, and it prepared the way for the next. In 1963 the U.S. Post Office introduced ZIP codes and with them two-letter abbreviations for each state. What else could stand for Oklahoma besides OK? Even the distinctive practice of capitalizing both letters of the abbreviation encouraged the connection. Thus Oklahoma was transformed from Okla. to OK.
And that, in turn, evidently was the inspiration for the legend on the state license plate, “Oklahoma Is OK,” first issued in 1967. It was followed in 1987 by the shorter declaration “Oklahoma OK!”
Today, making use of the abbreviation, there are businesses like OK Handyman and OK Alliance for Manufacturing Excellence, in Tulsa, and in Oklahoma City you’ll find OK Experts LLC, a handyman service, and OK Nails, a beauty shop. But there really aren’t that many Oklahoma businesses with OK in their names. A comedian can draw a laugh at the slogan “Oklahoma is OK.” And even if it’s not a joke, as we have noted in a previous chapter, OK just doesn’t imply much enthusiasm.
So Oklahoma could have played a starring role in the history of OK. Instead, it’s just OK.