A True Tale of Violence and the Vote
Hardback
Publication Date: 14/11/2017
An Amazon Best History Book of the Month This true crime story transports readers to a tumultuous time in Texas history--when the old ways clashed with the new--as it sheds light on police brutality, gun control, Mexican American civil rights, and much more "[A] riveting story of a time when sheriffs could get away with murder." --Dallas Morning News Beeville, Texas, was the most American of small towns--the place that GIs had fantasized about while fighting through the ruins of Europe, a place of good schools, clean streets, and churches. Old West justice ruled, as evidenced by a 1947 shootout when outlaws surprised popular sheriff Vail Ennis at a gas station and shot him five times, point-blank, in the belly. Ennis managed to draw his gun and put three bullets in each assailant; he reloaded and shot them three times more. Time magazine's full-page article on the shooting was seen by some as a referendum on law enforcement owing to the sheriff's extreme violence, but supportive telegrams from across America poured into Beeville's tiny post office. Yet when a second violent incident threw Ennis into the crosshairs of public opinion once again, the uprising was orchestrated by an unlikely figure: his close friend and Beeville's favorite son, Johnny Barnhart. Barnhart confronted Ennis in the election of 1952: a landmark standoff between old Texas, with its culture of cowboy bravery and violence, and urban Texas, with its lawyers, oil institutions, and a growing Mexican population. The town would never be the same again. The Last Sheriff in Texas is a riveting narrative about the postwar American landscape, an era grappling with the same issues we continue to face today. Debate over excessive force in law enforcement, Anglo-Mexican relations, gun control, the influence of the media, urban-rural conflict, the power of the oil industry, mistrust of politicians and the political process--all have surprising historical precedence in the story of Vail Ennis and Johnny Barnhart.
- ISBN:
- 9781619029965
- 9781619029965
- Category:
- History of the Americas
- Format:
- Hardback
- Publication Date:
- 14-11-2017
- Language:
- English
- Publisher:
- Counterpoint Press
- Country of origin:
- United States
- Dimensions (mm):
- 236.22x157.48x22.86mm
- Weight:
- 0.51kg
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