Justice for All: Dick T. Morgan, Frontier Lawyer & Common Man’s Congressman book discussion and signing with author Michael Hightower and David Morgan
February 22, 2 p.m.–4 p.m.
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On Saturday, February 22, from 2 to 4 p.m., historian and author Michael J. Hightower will have a book discussion and book signing for his new publication Justice for All: Dick T. Morgan, Frontier Lawyer & Common Man’s Congressman. The book discussion will include David Morgan, who is Dick T. Morgan’s great-grandson.
Justice for All chronicles the career of Dick T. Morgan, an Oklahoma founding father whose public service reflects a passion for fairness that was sorely lacking in Gilded Age America. After arriving in the Unassigned Lands (later, central Oklahoma) with the first wave of non-Native settlers on April 22, 1889, 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, including the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Farm Credit System.
Morgan’s adeptness in working across the aisle in a perpetually divided Congress serves as a wake-up call to politicians in thrall to ideology and identity politics at the expense of the public welfare. His speeches, publications, correspondence, newspaper interviews, and congressional testimonies reveal him as a public servant whose bedrock principles were rooted in the Republican Party—that is, the party of Lincoln.
In both public and private life, Morgan demonstrated a deep allegiance to what one of his role models, President James A. Garfield, defined as the heart and soul of the nation and the basis of a free government: the church, the school, and the home.
Justice for All owes its existence to Dick T. Morgan’s great-grandsons, David and Kenyon Morgan, who resolved to rescue their ancestor from a century of undeserved obscurity.
Traveling, literally and figuratively, in their great-grandfather’s footsteps, the Morgan brothers combined their talents in a journey of discovery that helped this biographer illuminate the Progressive Era through the experiences of a native Hoosier who became one of his adopted state’s most beloved and influential citizens.
About the Author: Michael J. Hightower, a fourth generation Oklahoman, earned his doctorate in sociology and taught at the University of Virginia before launching his career as an independent historian and biographer. He lives in Oklahoma City and Charlottesville.
Bob L. Blackburn , who wrote the foreward for Justice for All is the former executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. He lives in Oklahoma City
