• Oklahoma, the last Great Plains state, was admitted to statehood nearly a half-century after Kansas, the first state in the region.  The constitutions of the new states thus provided a good barometer of American social and constitutional changes during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. 

• Kansas (1861) and Nebraska (1867) created their constitutions at the end of the era of Jacksonian legal reform, and their constitutions incorporated many Jacksonian reforms including an elective judiciary, abolition of imprisonment for debt and a requirement that corporations be created only by general laws (see §§ ___).  The constitutions also reflected increasing skepticism about state and federal subsidies for railroad construction and other internal improvements, a skepticism that peaked in the neighboring Midwest region in the late 1860s and early 1870s.  In 1875, Missouri inaugurated an era of “Granger” constitutions that extensively regulated railroads; Nebraska promptly followed suit in its new constitution of the same year.

North and South Dakota were next:  their 1889 constitutions contained a full set of Granger regulations and contained hints of the era of Populist and Progressive reforms that was about to begin.  Both Dakota constitutions required their legislatures to regulate railroad rates, contained antitrust provisions and, in South Dakota, gave the people the right to legislate directly through the initiative and referendum – two reforms that many other states adopted during the Progressive era. 

• Oklahoma’s 1907 constitution, enacted at the height of the Progressive era, contained an advanced menu of Progressive reforms – with a Southern tinge.  In addition to detailed railroad regulation and antitrust provisions, the Oklahoma constitution created numerous regulatory agencies including departments of labor and mining and banking and corporation commissions.  It contained protective child labor provisions, mandated an 8-hour day for government projects, and incorporated a direct primary as well as initiative and referendum measures into the state’s political system.  But Oklahomans also enshrined segregation and the separate-but-equal principle (see § ___) in their constitution and, alone among the Great Plains states, Oklahoma catered to a fear of land speculation by prohibiting foreign ownership of land.