My life and an era

Buck Colbert Franklin (1879-1960) led an extraordinary life; from his boyhood adventures on a ranch in what was then the Indian Territory to his practice of law in twentieth-century Tulsa, he was an observant witness to the changes in politics, law, daily existence, and race relations that transformed the wide-open Southwest. Fascinating in its depiction of an intelligent young man's coming of age in the days of the land rush and the closing of the frontier, My Life and an Era is equally important for its reporting of the triracial culture of early Oklahoma. Recalling his youth spent in the Chickasaw Nation, Franklin suggests that blacks fared better in the Southwest in the days of the Indians than they did later with the influx of a large white population. In addition to his insights about the society of the time, Franklin offers his childhood reminiscences of mustangs and mountain lions, of farming and ranch life, that might appear in a Western novel. After returning from college in the foreign worlds of Nashville and Atlanta, Franklin married a college classmate, studied law by mail, passed the bar, and struggled to build a practice in Ardmore and, later, in the all-black town of Rentiesville during the first years of Oklahoma statehood. Eventually a successful attorney in Tulsa, he was an eyewitness to a number of important events in the Southwest, including the devastating Tulsa race riot of 1921, which destroyed the city's black section and left dozens dead. His account clearly shows the growing racial tensions as more and more people moved into the state in the period leading up to World War II.