TY  - BOOK
AU  - McCollom,James P.
TI  - The last sheriff in Texas: a true tale of violence and the vote 
SN  - 9781619029965
PY  - 2017///]
CY  - Berkeley, CA
PB  - Counterpoint Press
KW  - Ennis, Vail.
KW  - Sheriffs
KW  - Texas
KW  - Beeville
KW  - Case studies
KW  - Police misconduct
KW  - Elections
KW  - Beeville (Tex.)
KW  - Social conditions
KW  - 20th century
KW  - Politics and government
KW  - History
N1  - Includes bibliographical references
N2  - 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 all 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
ER  -