Alfalfa Bill: A Life in Politics by Robert L. Dorman (review)

Scholars commonly describe William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray as an enigma. Many consider him the most influential political figure in Oklahoma from the period just before statehood through at least the mid-1930s. Contradictions abound in trying to characterize his politics, which frustrates assessing his legacy. This biography hardly resolves Murray’s enigmatic character. Alfalfa Bill: A Life in Politics does, however, offer the best understanding to date of his often paradoxical nature.

Robert L. Dorman, a professor of library science at Oklahoma City University, scrutinizes with great care and insight Murray’s political life. His career included two defeats in elections for a seat in the Texas legislature before leaving for Indian Territory in 1898. There Murray quickly established himself as a trusted adviser to the Chickasaw Nation. He represented the tribe in the 1905 Sequoyah Convention’s futile attempt to create a separate state from Indian Territory. Leveraging that experience, he presided over the constitutional convention that led to Oklahoma statehood in 1907. Through his dominance over the proceedings, he shaped both the document under which Oklahoma entered the Union and the new state’s political culture. In the first state legislature, he served as Speaker of the House. An unsuccessful bid for governor and successful election to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives followed. After failing to win a third House term and another gubernatorial defeat, Murray seemingly retired from politics. From 1924 to 1929, he struggled to establish an agricultural colony in Bolivia. Just before the Great Depression, he returned to Oklahoma and easily won election as the state’s ninth governor, serving from 1931 to 1935. This marked the pinnacle of his political career. From 1905 to 1935, Murray cast a long shadow over Oklahoma politics that arguably continues to the present.

Dorman explains that Murray’s politics formed under the influence of the post–Civil War Democratic Party in his native Texas. By the time Murray arrived in Indian Territory, he also embraced many of the Progressive reforms of the era. A proponent of agrarianism and a self-anointed champion of the common man, he vehemently opposed corporations, trusts, and special interests. Murray’s dominance over Oklahoma’s constitutional convention enabled the territory to enter the Union as a state with many Progressive-era political, economic, and social reforms embedded into the state’s government and politics. Like many southern Progressives, Murray also believed African Americans were inherently inferior, and as the state House Speaker he assured that the first bill passed in the new state legislature legally established Jim Crow. He also held women as subordinate to men and, especially later in his life, became an ardent anti-Semite.

Contradiction more than consistency characterized Murray, but Dorman convincingly identifies Murray’s core beliefs. Murray strongly supported states’ rights and limited government, especially at the federal level. As governor, he opposed the New Deal despite the devastation the Great Depression wrought on Oklahoma. He also championed constitutionalism, as he defined it. Above all else, Murray—seen by himself and many Oklahomans throughout his lifetime as an advocate for the ordinary citizen—sought political power and influence. This quest primarily rested on his conviction that he knew what was best for Oklahoma and, as his ill-fated bid for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination revealed, the nation.

Dorman’s biography replaces Keith L. Bryant Jr.’s Alfalfa Bill Murray (Norman, Okla., 1968) as the best scholarly biography of Murray. The new book directly confronts the enigmatic character of Murray, a Progressive reformer and advocate for the common man who also was willing to wield power to the degree that at times he seemed to be a demagogue. Neither does the author minimize Murray’s adherence to white supremacy, antifeminism, and anti-Semitism. Dorman’s biography is especially noteworthy in its examination of race, gender, and class in trying to understand Murray. Those interested in Oklahoma...