Okay, I want you to imagine a politician. Just
for a second, close your eyes and picture the
standard archetype. Right, the tailored suit,
the big smile. Exactly. You're seeing someone
kissing a baby, shaking hands. It's all very
polished, very safe. Incredibly predictable.
It's the clean image we're kind of trained to
expect. Yeah. Now, I want you to take that mental
image, ball it up, and just throw it directly
into a wood chipper. Because today we are talking
about a man who looks like he slept in his clothes
for a week. And he probably did. A man who ran
away from home at 12, who tried to start like
a utopian dictatorship in the Bolivian jungle,
and who, as a sitting governor, declared martial
law not once, not twice, but nearly 50 times.
And we're not talking about martial law for,
you know, a natural disaster or an invasion.
He was using the National Guard to enforce ticket
sales at college football games. And to invade
the border of Texas over a bridge toll. We are
diving deep into the life of William H. Murray,
better known to history as Alfalfa Bill. He was
the ninth governor of Oklahoma, a key architect
of the state's constitution. But, you know, looking
at our source material today, calling him a governor.
Feels like calling a hurricane a light breeze.
It really does. He is, I mean, without a doubt,
one of the most paradoxical figures in American
political history. You just have to understand
this guy is a study in extremes. And that's our
mission for this deep dive. We're not just recounting
a biography. We're trying to get at the mechanics
of a populist strongman. How does a runaway kid
become a political powerhouse? And how can someone
simultaneously save people from starvation during
the Great Depression while trampling on the very
democracy he swore to protect? And crucially,
how do we reckon with a legacy that's built on
both, you know, economic salvation for the poor
and this deeply infringed systemic racism and
anti -Semitism? Because you just cannot tell
his story without both sides of that coin. It's
impossible. It is a complicated, messy, and frankly,
a wild story. But to understand the guy waving
a revolver at the Texas Rangers in the 1930s,
we had to go back to the beginning. We do. The
sources, they paint his early life almost like
a Charles Dickens novel, but set in the brutal
heat of the Wild West. It's a really grim start.
Born in 1869 in Collinsville, Texas. His mother
dies when he's just two years old. Oh, wow. His
father remarries. And by all accounts, the home
life was just toxic. There was tension. There
was poverty. So in 1881, at just 12 years old,
William makes a decision that really defines
the rest of his life. He leaves. And let's just
pause on that. 12 years old, most kids are worried
about homework. He didn't just run away for a
night. He went fully independent. He was on his
own. He spent his entire teenage years picking
cotton, chopping wood, working as a bricklayer.
It is so hard to overstate the level of grit
you'd need to survive that in the late 19th century.
He had no safety net. None. If he didn't work,
he didn't eat. And that kind of experience, it
creates a very specific kind of personality,
someone who believes fundamentally that they
owe nothing to anyone. Right. Total self -reliance.
But usually that kind of hard labor life doesn't
leave room for intellectual pursuits. You're
just too tired to read. But he was obsessed.
Obsessed is the right word. He had this insatiable
hunger to understand how the world worked. He
was selling books door to door just to pay his
tuition at the College Hill Institute. And then
he does something even more audacious. He teaches
himself law. That part always blows my mind.
He didn't go to some prestigious law school.
No professors, no study groups. No. He sat down
with the books. He read the law. He absorbed
it. And then he passed the Texas bar exam in
1897. That self -taught thing seems so important
for his psychology later on. Yeah. Like if you
teach yourself the law, you probably feel like
you understand it better than everyone else.
Absolutely. It breeds a certain... intellectual
arrogance. He felt he knew the true meaning of
the law because he had wrestled with it alone.
But the real turning point, the moment that launches
the legend of Alfalfa Bill that happens in 1898,
he crosses the river into Tishomingo, which was
Indian territory at the time. Specifically, the
capital of the Chickasaw Nation. Remember, Oklahoma
isn't a state yet. It's a complex territory of
tribal sovereignty. And this is where the runaway
bricklayer makes a very, very strategic move.
He meets Mary Alice Harrell. He does. And looking
at her family tree, this isn't just a romance.
No, it's a political merger. It is. Mary Alice
was the niece of Douglas H. Johnston, who was
the governor of the Chickasaw Nation. So by marrying
her, Murray didn't just get a wife, he got legitimacy.
He gains status within the tribe and, crucially,
the right to practice in Chickasaw courts. So
he leverages this connection, becomes a legal
advisor to the governor. It's so ironic, isn't
it? He builds his foundation on indigenous sovereignty
and tribal law. Which, as we'll see, he has no
problem discarding when it doesn't suit him.
That's a recurring theme with Murray. He uses
structures, the Chickasaw Nation, the Democratic
Party, the U .S. Constitution as tools. When
the tool works, he uses it. And when it doesn't,
he breaks it. Before we get to the state building,
I have to ask about the name. Alfalfa Bill. It
sounds like a caricature. Was he just really
into farming or was this like a marketing gimmick?
A bit of both, really. He was a farmer and he
was an early proponent of cultivating alfalfa
in the region. It restores nitrogen to the soil.
It was actually very progressive agriculture.
If it wasn't random. No, but the name was a branding
exercise. Around 1902, he was campaigning and
he developed this unique stump speech style.
He would pivot seamlessly from like complex political
theory to a lecture on the best soil conditions
for growing alfalfa. That is incredible. Incredibly
specific. I mean, can you imagine going to a
rally today and the candidate starts explaining
how to compost? But it was genius. A reporter
caught one of these species and dubbed him alfalfa
bill. And it stuck. It stuck because it signaled
to every rural voter. This guy is one of us.
He knows the dirt. It was his outsider card.
So he's got the brand. He's got the legal chops.
He has the connections. Now we hit 1906. Oklahoma's
gearing up for statehood. They need a constitution.
And Murray manages to position himself as the
president of the Constitutional Convention. And
he didn't just preside over it, right? He dominated
it. Oh, completely. He was the force of nature
in that room. He worked with Charles Haskell,
who became the first governor. But everyone knew
Murray was the intellectual engine. He wrote
huge chunks of that document himself. And this
is where we have to peel back that founding father
mythology. Because while he's writing the laws
for a new state, he is actively hard -coding
racism into the system. We have to be really
clear about this. This wasn't just a man of his
time prejudice where he quietly held bad views.
Murray was an active architect of segregation.
He explicitly pushed for it. He did. He pushed
for Jim Crow laws to be written directly into
the Constitution itself. He wanted the separation
of races to be the supreme law of the state from
day one. There's a story from the convention
records that just illustrates his mindset so
perfectly. It involves the staff at the convention
hall. It's so petty. But it says so much. It's
a chilling detail. Murray looked at the staff
and decided to rearrange them based on his racial
hierarchy. He fired all the black clerks and
all the white janitors. And then just switched
them? Then he switched them. He hired the white
men to be clerks and the black men to be janitors.
That is such a deliberate display of power. He's
physically rearranging human beings to fit his
worldview that black people belong in servitude
and white people belong in administration. Exactly.
He's on record stating that he believed African
-Americans were failures in professional roles
like law or medicine. He advocated for segregated
schools, strict anti -miscegenation laws. He
saw the state constitution not just as a legal
document, but as a mechanism to preserve a white
supremacist social order. So you have this paradox
forming. To the white tenant farmer, he's a hero
fighting the banks. To the black Oklahoman, he
is a tyrant solidifying their oppression. And
that duality, it follows him everywhere. But
before he takes the governor's office, there's
this weird interlude. A really weird interlude.
The Bolivian Adventure. This is the part of the
research where I had to double check that we
weren't reading a fiction script. I know. Because
it sounds like the plot of a movie that got rejected
for being too unrealistic. It does sound made
up. It's the 1920s. Murray has lost a run for
Congress in 1916, lost a run for governor in
1918. He's bitter. He thinks the U .S. is going
to hell. So he decides to build his own society.
Naturally. If you can't win the election, just
start a new country. Essentially, yes. He negotiates
with the government of Bolivia to lease about
42 ,000 acres of land. He calls the colony Aguarenda.
And he recruits families from Oklahoma to go
with him, selling it as this paradise where the
common man could live free. But it wasn't a democracy.
He wasn't starting a republic. Oh, no, no. He
went there to be a feudal lord. He wrote the
Murray Code for the colonists, a list of laws
they had to sign. And these are people who sold
everything to follow him to South America. What
was in the code? Well, some of it was standard
puritanical stuff. No brothels, no saloons. But
then you get the micromanagement. Murray owned
all the agricultural equipment. All of it. All
of it. He had to personally approve any transfer
of land. And my favorite detail, which is just
so bizarre, every colonist was required to build
a poultry shed within two years. A mandatory
poultry shed. Mandatory. It shows you his mindset.
He wasn't just setting broad policy. He wanted
to control how you farmed, where you lived, and
where you kept your chickens. Total control.
So how did the kingdom of Murray work out? Disastrously.
Just disastrously. The environment was brutal,
insects like you wouldn't believe, oppressive
heat, rain that washed everything away. But the
biggest failure was Murray's own arrogance. What
happened? He had leased this empty land only
to arrive and find it was already occupied by
indigenous people who, surprisingly, didn't want
to be evicted by a guy from Oklahoma in a rumpled
suit. It's that colonial mindset again. Just
assuming the land is there for the taking. The
colonists were miserable. The reality just did
not match the brochure. Most left within months
feeling scammed. By 1928, the Bolivian president
canceled the lease. Murray came home broke. So
picture this. It's 1929. The stock market has
just crashed. The Dust Bowl is starting to turn
the sky black. Murray is 60 years old, penniless,
a failed colonizer. And he says, I'm going to
run for governor. And the establishment just
laughed at him. The newspapers treated him like
a joke. They called him eccentric, washed up,
a relic. But Murray understood something they
didn't. He understood the sheer desperation of
the people. The Dust Bowl wasn't just bad weather.
It was apocalyptic. Exactly. And Murray launched
a campaign that was visceral. His slogan was
bread, butter, bacon, and beans. It wasn't abstract
economic theory. It was, I will feed you. But
we have to look at the other side of that populism.
Because while he was promising bacon and beans,
he was also using a very different slogan to
identify the enemies. Right. This is the Three
Cs slogan. He told voters he was fighting against.
corporations, carpetbaggers, and coons. And just
to clarify for everyone listening, carpetbaggers
is an old derogatory term for northerners who
came south to profit after the Civil War. And
the third C is, of course, a horrific racial
slur. It was a strategy of punching up and punching
down at the same time. How so? He attacked the
big banks and oil companies, punching up, which
thrilled the poor. But he also attacked black
people punching down, which consolidated his
right base. And it was effective. He won the
1930 election in a lambslide. So now the man
who tried to play king in Bolivia is actually
in charge of a state during the worst economic
crisis in modern history. And he doesn't govern
like a normal politician. He doesn't wait for
committees. He governed like a general. He realized
the legislature was too slow, so he just bypassed
them. He used the National Guard as his personal
enforcement arm. The numbers here are staggering.
He declared martial law over 30 times. Most governors
go their whole careers without doing it once.
He was doing it every other week for everything.
And the most famous incident, the one that really
captures the madness of the era, is the Toll
Bridge War. This story is wild. It feels like
an action movie standoff. So walk us through
it. Okay, so... Oklahoma and Texas are separated
by the Red River. A private company owned a toll
bridge. But the states were building a new free
bridge nearby. To help commerce. Right. But the
toll bridge company sued to stop the free bridge
from opening. A federal judge agreed and ordered
the free bridge closed. Okay. Standard legal
dispute. The courts rule, you follow the ruling.
Usually, yes. But the governor of Texas, he responds
to the court and barricades the Texas side of
the free bridge. While Murray didn't care about
the court order, he declared martial law. Over
a bridge. Over a bridge. He sent the Oklahoma
National Guard to the river. The reports say
they were armed with old revolvers looking pretty
ragtag. Murray himself went down there, allegedly
wearing a gun on his hip, and he ordered the
bridge forced open. He literally invaded the
Texas border. Invaded Texas and Texas retreated.
The public loved it. Here's a guy ignoring the
federal courts, ignoring the neighboring state
just to save them a few cents on a toll. It cemented
his image. But that sets such a dangerous precedent.
If you can ignore the courts for a bridge, what
else can you ignore them for? Exactly. And he
applied that same logic to the oil industry.
Oil prices had crashed because of overproduction.
Oil was selling for pennies a barrel. The economy
was collapsing because oil was too cheap. So
what does Alfalfa Bill do? Does he ask for a
subsidy? No. He declares martial law in the oil
fields. He sends in the troops and orders 3 ,000
oil wells to shut down at gunpoint. He literally
told them nobody pumps a drop until the price
hits $1 barrel. That is massive government intervention.
It sounds almost communist, which is so ironic
given his politics later. It's deeply ironic
because Murray hated socialism and despised the
New Deal. But here he was, manipulating the global
oil market with the military. And again, it worked.
The shortage drove the price up. He saved the
independent oil men. It raises this really difficult
question, doesn't it? The democratic institutions,
the courts, the legislature were failing. People
were starving. Murray stepped in and broke the
law to fix the problem. Can you be a hero and
a tyrant at the same time? That is the central
tension of his life. We have to remember he donated
his own salary to feed the poor when the legislature
wouldn't pass a relief bill. Right. He lived
in the governor's mansion, but the place was
a mess full of people asking for help. And he
was literally emptying his pockets for them.
But he destroyed the concept of the rule of law
to do it. And eventually that strongman act stops
being charming and starts getting alarming. He
had his eyes on the White House, didn't he? He
did. In 1932, he ran for president. He thought
the country wanted what Oklahoma had, a dictator.
got things done. But he was running against Franklin
D. Roosevelt. That's a tough matchup. And this
is where Murray's nastiness really backfired.
He didn't just debate policy. He launched a smear
campaign claiming that FDR had syphilis. Which
was a complete fabrication. Pure lies. It just
showed how unhinged he was becoming. And the
country looked at Murray, this guy in rumpled
clothes shouting conspiracy theories, and then
they looked at FDR, who projected calm and confidence.
He was crushed. Crushed at the convention. And
after that loss, he seems to spiral. He's no
longer the fun populist who opens bridges. He
becomes bitter, extremely toxic. He turned on
FDR in the New Deal. Yeah, viewing them as federal
overreach, which again, so ironic given his own
record. But his later years were defined by his
writing. He published books that were essentially
screeds of hate. We have titles like The Negro's
Place and The Call of Race. Yes. He tried to
use pseudoscience to justify segregation. He
was writing about how Jewish people should be
deported to Madagascar. I mean, he wasn't just
a politician anymore. He was a propagandist for
white supremacy and anti -Semitism. It's important
to sit with that. Because for a long time, the
history books in Oklahoma just treated him as
this colorful character. Oh, that's just Alfalfa
Bill, the Kirky governor. Right. They focused
on the Bridge War and the Alfalfa speeches. There's
a Lake Murray. There was a Murray Hall at Oklahoma
State University. The state celebrated the action
hero and conveniently ignored the architect of
segregation. But that is changing now. It is.
In 2020, Oklahoma State University removed his
name from Murray Hall. We are in a period of
reevaluation. We're realizing that you can't
separate the man who fed the poor from the man
who institutionalized Jim Crow. They're the same
person. They're the same person. You can't have
the bridge without the racism. It's the cost
of populism, isn't it? When you empower a leader
to break the rules because you like the outcome,
like opening a bridge, you are handing them the
sword they can use to cut down anyone they don't
like. Precisely. Murray shows us the seduction
of the strongman. It feels good when they're
fighting for you. When he was fighting the banks,
the poor whites loved him. But that power is
never contained. His efficiency came at the cost
of democracy and human rights. So when we look
at the legacy of Alfalfa Bill today, it's not
just a history lesson. It's a warning. It's a
warning about the tradeoffs we accept in moments
of crisis. Murray saved lives with his economic
policies. There's no doubt about that. But he
also left a stain on the state's constitution
and culture that took... decades to even begin
to scrub out. A fascinating, dark, and essential
deep dive into American history. It leaves you
wondering, if a politician showed up today promising
to fix everything by ignoring the courts and
mobilizing the military, would we cheer them
on? Or would we see the ghost of Alfalfa Bill?
That is the question. Something to mull over.
That's it for this deep dive into William H.
Murray. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch
you next time.