Fred Harris
Activity Sheet

Biography
Fred R. Harris is a former two-term senator from Oklahoma, a former member of the Kerner Commission, an unsuccessful candidate in 1976 for the Democratic presidential nomination, and is currently a distinguished member of the political science faculty at the University of New Mexico.
Harris has been a Fulbright Scholar for research and study in Mexico (1981) and a Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer in Uruguay (1989). He was a Visiting Professor at Mexico's National University in 1982. The author of fifteen books, he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Easy Pickin's
Book Description from amazon.com
With a keen historical sense and storytelling touted by the New York Times as "spare yet emotionally rich," Fred Harris spins an involving tale in Easy Pickin's, his second mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma.
Sheriff Okie Dunn is new on the job. The onetime boxer turned law student is now the Cash County sheriff, and Okie finally seems to have settled down. He's even casting about for a woman-and might have caught two. Then the quiet town into which he has settled is turned upside down.
Three strangers blow into Vernon looking for a young heiress who was adopted at birth. After two break-ins and an assault on Okie's deputy, Okie takes to investigating the strangers in earnest. First on his list is a slovenly bounty hunter, followed shortly by a tall, cool, red-headed woman lawyer named Em Hoffer, who claims to be working for the heiress's mother.
But Okie's troubles have just begun when a body-dropped clear out of the sky-lands in an oat field outside of town. Then Okie himself narrowly escapes an attack on his life, and the search for the killer becomes personal.
Just as Okie turns his attention to the third stranger-dashing, mysterious, and very suspicious-the man takes off with his easy prey. The sultry city of Veracruz in Mexico is far out of Okie's jurisdiction, but he must follow the trail there, lest a killer get away with murder again. Read an exerpt.

Coyote Revenge
Book Description from amazon.com
Booted out of law school, young Okie Dunn returns home to the warm prairie town of Vernon with high hopes for the future. He finds, though, that the friendly world he left behind is falling apart--and not just because of the Great Depression.
When his childhood friend, Sheriff Dub Ready, is killed, Okie takes over the job, swearing to bring the killer to justice. But just who wanted Dub dead and why? And was his murder linked to the mysterious, brutal deaths of his parents two years before?
Despite his best intentions, Okie discovers that upholding the law and finding the truth can be difficult, dangerous business, one that will pit him against lifelong friends, business associates, a cold-blooded killer...and even his own heart. Read an exerpt.

Locked in the Poorhouse
Book Description from amazon.com
Thirty years ago President Johnson convened the Kerner Commission to examine the reasons why race riots were rampant. The commission concluded that the U.S. was "moving towards two societies, one black, one white, seperate and unequal." Today, poverty in America is worse than in 1968. In the midst of a U.S. economic boom, the country is resegregating, and poor African Americans and Hispanics continue to be concentrated in urban environments. With contributors including best-selling author William Julius Wilson, this book shows what works and what doesn't in dealing with these problems and offers practical policy recommendations.

You may email fharris@unm.edu at fharris@unm.edu

Fred Harris Papers Collection
http://www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/archives/harris.htm

Complete Vita Available
http://polisci.unm.edu/faculty_listing/Harris.htm