
There will be a parade in Oklahoma City Saturday to commemorate “100 years of theft,” reports Reznet’s Mark Francis. After the Civil War, tribes in what is now Oklahoma were required to sell their land to the federal government for between 60 cents and $1.25 an acre. This is the land that, in 1889, became the prize in the Great Land Rush.
Francis reminds us that more than two million acres of land in Indian Territory were opened for settlement in the first of what became five Oklahoma land rushes. “Up to 75,000 people surrounded the area to stake their claim for fewer than 12,000 homesteads between 1889 and 1895,” according to Francis.
Saturday’s parade is a reminder of who owned the land before the land rush began. For more information on the parade, go here or here.