In our own time, the word “populist” has come to mean many things, but its most common connotation is that of the rabble-rousing politician—usually from the political right but sometimes from the left—who makes demagogic appeals to the fears and prejudices of ordinary voters. But history tells us a different story. In Texas, the birthplace of the original Populist movement in the 1890s, Populism indeed appealed to the interests of common farmers and laborers, but the upstart party also counted a fair number of professionals and intellectuals in their ranks. Leading the Texas Populists was Thomas Lewis Nugent, a soft-spoken, scholarly former state judge who had never held elective office. A holder of unorthodox religious beliefs, an admirer of the quasi-socialist theorist Henry George, and a man of spotless public and private reputation, Nugent was the Populist Party’s nominee for governor twice, running races that threatened to end the domination of Texas politics by the Democrats. This session will explore the life and career of this improbable hero who helped make Populism a political phenomenon and who, but for his untimely death in 1895, might have changed the course of Texas history.