Oklahoma Statehood and Chief Justice
Selected to represent Durant and the surrounding area at the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, Williams traveled to Guthrie where he would meet two men that would have profound effects on both his and Oklahoma’s future: Charles N. Haskell and William H. Murray. Through their labors, Oklahoma’s Constitution was established and Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907. On that same day, Charles Haskell was inaugurated as the first Governor of Oklahoma.
Through his friendship with Haskell and his own skill as an attorney, Williams was appointed by Haskell to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Once on the Court, Williams was selected to serve as the Court’s first Chief Justice. He was reappointed that post again in 1908 and would serve in that office until 1914, the only position he would hold on Oklahoma’s highest court.
In 1914, before the end of Oklahoma’s second governor’s term, Governor Lee Cruce, Williams resigned from his position as Chief Justice in order to place his name in the Democratic primaries for Governor of Oklahoma. His fame as Chief Justice easily won him the Democratic nomination. Despite being a Democrat, Williams was fiercely conservative and possessed an assertive personality and held a high sense of duty. Williams’s Republican opponent was John Fields, the editor of a farm related newspaper based in Oklahoma City. Williams faced a difficult fight for the governorship with Fields’s paper granting him the majority of the farm related voters’ vote. Despite this Williams’s popularity won him the victory by a narrow margin. He was inaugurated as the third Governor of Oklahoma on January 11, 1915.
Read more about this topic: Robert L. Williams
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“On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children’s children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.”
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“I know only one person who ever crossed the ocean without feeling it, either spiritually or physically.... he went from Oklahoma to France and back again ... without ever getting off dry land. He remembers several places I remember too, and several French words, but he says firmly, “We must of went different ways. I don’t rightly recollect no water, ever.””
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“We’re for statehood. We want statehood because statehood means the protection of our farms and our fences; and it means schools for our children; and it means progress for the future.”
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“These native villages are as unchanging as the woman in one of their stories. When she was called before a local justice he asked her age. “I have 45 years.” “But,” said the justice, “you were forty-five when you appeared before me two years ago.” “Señor Judge,” she replied proudly, drawing herself to her full height, “I am not of those who are one thing today and another tomorrow!””
—State of New Mexico, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)