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The latest from award-winning biographer Michael Hightower chronicles the career of Dick T. Morgan, an Oklahoma founding father whose public service reflected a sense of fairness that was rare in the Gilded Age. After arriving in the Unassigned Lands with the first wave of non-Indian settlers, Morgan developed a reputation as the go-to lawyer for land disputes, built a substantial real estate business, and promoted church-building across Oklahoma Territory. During his tenure in Congress from 1909 until his death in 1920, he helped create institutions that were central to progressivism in the post-frontier period and have shaped modern America.
Michael is a fourth-generation Oklahoman and independent historian and biographer. He is the author of several books about Oklahoma, including At War with Corruption, which won the Oklahoma Book Award for Nonfiction in 2022. He has taught sociology at the University of Virginia and Washington and Lee University.