This issue of Voices of Indian Territory is a special one, because it ends a first year of publication, on the eve of the Centennial celebration of Oklahoma. This 100 year is important, because for our ancestors at last, they became citizens of the United States. I am speaking about the Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes. We know that For the Chickasaw Freedmen in particular, admission of Oklahoma to the Union, ended a 41 year struggle to have a country.
The Chickasaw Freedmen had been in a continuous battle to attain citizenship in a land that no longer needed them. As slaves they were a priceless commodity, providing
a free labor force to their nation. As free people, although promised many things including citizenship, they faced decades of neglect, and disenfranchisement from the nation of their birth. The Freedmen of the other tribes were not without their struggles, but the Chickasaw Freedmen were the group never adopted by their mother tribes—the land of their parents, so American citizenship was the beginning of a new journey and a new struggle for equality in a new land.
You can read more of the editors comments in the Winter 2007 edition of "VOICES OF INDIAN TERRITORY"