HARRIS, Charles H. 1937–

(Charles Houston Harris, III)

PERSONAL:

Born February 6, 1937, in Chihuahua, Mexico; son of Charles Houston II (a surgeon) and Elvira Harris; married Betty McGrew, June 17, 1961; children: Charles Jeffrey, John Anthony, Stanley Neville. Education: University of Texas, B.A., 1959, M.A., 1962, Ph.D., 1968. Politics: Republican. Religion: Methodist.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Las Cruces, NM. Office—New Mexico State University, Department of History, Box 30001, Dept. 3H, Las Cruces, NM 88003.

CAREER:

Writer, historian, and educator. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, emeritus professor of history. Military service: U.S. Army, 1961-63; became first lieutenant.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Alpha Theta.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Social Science Research Council grant, 1965 (declined); Fulbright-Hays award for research in Mexico, 1965; National Endowment for the Humanities research grant, 1970.

WRITINGS:

The Sanchez Navarros: A Socioeconomic Study of a Coahuilan Latifundio, 1846-1853, Loyola University Press (Chicago, IL), 1964.

The Mexican Family Empire, the Latifundio of the Sanchez Navarros, 1765-1867, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1975.

(With Louis R. Sadler) The Border and the Revolution, New Mexico State University Press (Las Cruces, NM), 1988.

(With Louis R. Sadler) The Archaeologist Was a Spy: Sylvanus G. Morley and the Office of Naval Intelligence, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2003.

(With Louis R. Sadler) The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910-1920, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author and historian Charles H. Harris is a retired history professor who taught at the New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. A fluent Spanish speaker who was born in Mexico, much of Harris's work concentrates on topics related to Mexico and the Mexico/Texas border regions.

In The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910-1920, Harris and coauthor Louis R. Sadler examine the accomplishments and defeats, ferocious reputation and undignified infamy of the storied Texas Rangers. The book concentrates on the violent and tumultuous period of the Mexican Revolution, when the Rangers secured their legend as iron-willed lawmen. The authors detail the extent of the Rangers' usual law-enforcement assignments and how the pressure of their duties expanded while providing security for the more than 1,250 turbulent miles of the Texas/Mexico border during the revolution. The Rangers were also responsible for stopping any attempts made by Texans to impair the Mexican government and to prevent invasion across the border by Mexican revolutionaries. In 1915 and 1916, the Mexicans instituted the Plan de San Diego uprising, an attempt to invade the U.S. and overthrow the American government. The Texas Rangers thwarted this plan in a bloody but decisive manner, defending their fearsome reputation while securing the border. Sadler and Harris also examine the multiple contemporary influences on the Rangers, including political pressures, cultural and racial troubles, economic hardships, and the pervasive, consistent danger that always threatened to turn deadly.

Reviewer Andrew Graybill, writing in Journal of Southern History, noted that the book "has several strengths, most notably its mammoth base of archival research." However, Graybill also found that despite the authors' extensive research, the "organization of their findings blunts the volume's possible impact by drowning the reader in a sea of undifferentiated detail." Still, other reviewers offered favorable comments about Sadler and Harris's work. Library Journal contributor Stephen H. Peters, for example, called the book a "balanced and well-written account" of the Rangers' history, while Graybill noted it is "certainly the most comprehensive" of Ranger histories to have appeared by the mid-2000s. Gerald F. Kreyche, writing in USA Today Magazine, called The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution not so much a revisionist history as it is the demythologization of a law enforcement group as famed as Scotland Yard or the Canadian Mounties." Kreyche added: "The virtues and warts of the Texas Rangers are given full exposure in what probably is a definitive work."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Journal of Southern History, November, 2005, Andrew Graybill, review of The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910-1920, p. 918.

Library Journal, October 1, 2004, Stephen H. Peters, review of The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution, p. 94.

USA Today Magazine, January, 2005, Gerald F. Kreyche, review of The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution, p. 80.*