Dr. Arrell Morgan Gibson was born in Kansas and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II before attending the University of Oklahoma to study under the legendary historian and teacher Dr. Edward Everett Dale. Gibson began his professional career at Phillips University (now Northern Oklahoma College) in Enid as a professor and Director of Graduate Studies before he was invited to join the OU faculty in 1957.

Dr. Gibson became a leading historian and award-winning author, as well as an internationally known expert on Oklahoman, southwestern, and American Indian history. He was awarded as the George Lynn Cross Research Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, and his book The Chickasaws placed second in the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1972. Gibson was named Oklahoma Writer of the Year in 1972 and penned other books, such as Wilderness Bonanza, The Oklahoma Story, and Oklahoma: A History of Five Centuries.