Dr. Michael Phillips is an historian and author whose scholarship focuses on racism and racial
violence, political extremism, and End Times religious beliefs. He received his doctorate from
the University of Texas in 2002. In 2006, The University of Texas Press published his first book, White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001, which won the Texas
Historical Commission’s T.R. Fehrenbach Award for best book on Texas history. He taught
American and Texas history for twenty years at various universities and colleges in the Dallas-
Fort Worth area before retiring in 2025. He was a leader in the successful movement to remove
Confederate monuments in Dallas. His latest book is The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History
of Eugenics in Texas, co-authored with longtime journalist Betsy Friauf.
Dr. Michael Phillips
Chair, Communications Committee