14 Facts About Angie Debo

Angie Debo's family settled in the rural community of Marshall, where Debo would live, on and off, for the rest of her life.

Angie Debo earned a teacher's certificate and began teaching when she was 16.

Angie Debo taught history at Enid High School for four years before taking time to study at the University of Chicago, where she earned a master's degree in international relations in 1924.

Angie Debo's dissertation, published by the University of Oklahoma Press as The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic, examined the effects of the American Civil War on the Choctaw Tribe.

Angie Debo wrote that these treaties were supposed to protect the tribal lands "as long as the waters run, as long as the grass grows"; but, after the 1887 Dawes Act enacted a policy of private ownership that was eventually forced on the tribes, the system was manipulated by whites to swindle the Indians out of their property.

Angie Debo's charges were controversial; and many of the actors were still alive.

Angie Debo took a position writing for the Federal Writers' Project in Oklahoma during the Great Depression, but her work for the travel guide, Oklahoma: A Guide to the Sooner State, was extensively revised without her permission.

Angie Debo's work was seen as a rebuttal to the Frontier Thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, presenting a history of westward expansion based not on the ideal of manifest destiny but on the exploitation of the Native Americans.

Angie Debo was a lifelong Democrat, and said Henry Bellmon was the only Republican ever to receive her vote.

Angie Debo served on the board of directors of the Association on American Indian Affairs, and of the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Angie Debo wrote one novel, Prairie City, the Story of an American Community, based on the history of her hometown Marshall.

Angie Debo finished her last history book, Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place at the age of 85, and it was first published by University of Oklahoma Press in 1976.

Angie Debo died a few weeks later, on February 21,1988, at the age of 98.

Angie Debo left her papers, books, and literary rights to Oklahoma State University, where she had worked as a librarian and researcher.