I commemorate every year by invoking the wisdom of a little-remembered Oklahoma senator named Robert Latham Owen Jr.
If Sen. Owen, a populist and a Democrat – at a time when that was not an oxymoron – is forgotten today, well, that reflects poorly on us, not him. He was an extraordinarily accomplished person. Born in Virginia four years before the outbreak of the Civil War, Owen gravitated to Oklahoma territory, which longed for statehood. It was a good match.
“A native of the oldest state in the Union, he became an architect of one of the young states in the Union,” Sen. Thomas Gore (a distant cousin of Al Gore) noted in 1942. “He had the wisdom to go west … with his own hand and head and heart he helped to blazon the 46th star in the field of blue.”
Robert Owen, incidentally, was also a man who scoffed at any notion that Friday the 13th was a day to be feared.
the idea that bad luck awaits when the 13th day of the month falls on a Friday is a melding of two old superstitions: that 13 is an unlucky number; and that Friday is an unlucky day.
University of Delaware professor Thomas Fernsler, affectionately known as “Dr. 13,” says the number gets bad press because it follows 12, which numerologists call a “complete” number. Disparate societies over the millennia produced 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Mount Olympus, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Christ. In the Christian tradition, the 13th person to sit at the Last Supper, Judas Iscariot, betrayed Jesus.
Friday has also long been considered in the folktales of many cultures to be the wrong day to begin a venture: to lay the keel of a new boat, harvest a crop, begin a long journey, (or start a presidency?). At some point in the 20th century, these two superstitions merged.
Not everyone subscribed to these phobias, a notable exception being a turn-of-the-century U.S. senator and onetime Democratic presidential candidate – the aforementioned Robert L. Owen. On March 13, 1908 (a Friday, naturally), he sponsored 13 bills in Congress.
“Friday the 13th holds no terrors for Senator Owen,” reported the New York Times. “The senator from Oklahoma is a Cherokee Indian, and he places the Indian sign on the ancient superstition.”
Actually, Robert Owen’s ethnic heritage was not so easily defined. Born in Virginia in 1856, he attended Washington and Lee University before heading out West to what was then the territory of Oklahoma, where he practiced law and represented what were then called the “Five Civilized Tribes” of the Cherokee Nation.
His mother, Narcissa, claimed some Cherokee blood, but not much. Tracing her own family tree, she deduced she was 1/16th Cherokee, although the editor of her memoirs thinks she might have skipped a generation or two. This research suggests that Robert Owen was perhaps just 1/64th Cherokee. That was close enough for the newspapers of the day and for the Cherokee Nation elders, who recognized Owen as one of their own. But Robert Owen was more interesting than his bloodlines.
He taught at the Cherokee Orphan Asylum, served as secretary of the board of education of the Cherokee Nation, published the “Indian Chieftain” newspaper, and founded and ran the First National Bank of Muskogee. In the 1890s, he became a member of the Democratic National Committee, a position he used to advocate on behalf of Indian rights.
Entering elective politics as a progressive Democrat, he championed Prohibition, women’s suffrage, and child labor laws. Although as an Oklahoma senator Owen protected the oil industry and other local interests, he made his national reputation railing against special interest politics. He favored numerous reforms pushed by the fledgling Progressive movement, including direct election of senators, the referendum system adopted by Oregon, California, and Wisconsin – and pushed for a cabinet-level federal health department a half century before it came into being.
On May 13, 1910, he delivered a stemwinder on the Senate floor that so impressed William Jennings Bryan that the famous populist had it reprinted in his magazine “Commoner.”
In that speech, which rings true 114 years later, Sen. Owen explained how the will of the voters is routinely subverted by special interests and machine politics.
He then framed a question that is still being asked in the halls of Congress – by lawmakers of good intent and posturing posers alike. The question is often directed at members of Congress, as well as politicians of every stripe – from school board members and aldermen to presidential candidates.
“If the people really rule,” Owen asked, “why don’t the people get what they want?”
Carl M. Cannon
Washington Bureau chief, RealClearPolitics
