Background

Fred Roy Harris was born on November 13, 1930, in Walters, Oklahoma, United States, to Fred Byron and Alene (Person) Harris.

Education

Fred R. Harris graduated from Walters High School with honors. In 1952, Harris received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Oklahoma majoring in history and political science. He was awarded an LL. B. degree with distinction by the University of Oklahoma law school and was admitted to the bar in 1954.

Career

After receiving his law degree, Harris practiced in Lawton and in 1956 founded the firm of Harris, Newcombe, Redman, and Doolin. He engaged in general civil practice as his firm became one of the largest and most successful in southwestern Oklahoma. He resigned in 1964 when he was elected to the United States Senate.

Politics had long interested Harris. While a student in Norman, he sought to represent his home district in the state legislature. He lost by thirty-five votes, but in 1956 he won election to the state senate and became the youngest member of that body. Over the next eight years he served or chaired all major committees and introduced much important legislation, including a measure for local industrial financing. He sponsored a measure that created the Oklahoma Human Rights Commission to prohibit discrimination in state employment. Harris also chaired the Senate Democratic caucus, and on the basis of his record he was chosen as Junior Chamber of Commerce Outstanding Young Man of Oklahoma award in 1959.

In 1962 Harris sought the Democratic nomination for governor. He finished fifth in the primary. Two years later he proved more formidable in his bid to complete the unexpired term of Oklahoma's U.S. Senator, Robert S. Kerr. After Kerr's death on January 1, 1963, Gov. J. Howard Edmondson resigned to serve, by appointment, as U.S. senator until the next state and national election. At the Democratic primary on May 5, 1964, he out-polled Harris, former governor Raymond Gary, and a minor candidate (Willard Owens). Since no candidate had a majority, a run-off between the two top contenders was required. On May 26 Harris secured the Democratic nomination, defeating Edmondson by almost a hundred thousand votes.

His Republican opponent, Charles "Bud" Wilkinson, was the popular and much admired football coach at the University of Oklahoma. Harris benefited by close ties to the Kerr family, and in the November 3, 1964, presidential election the landslide victory of Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater was a factor in Harris's close victory. He defeated Wilkinson by 466,782 votes to 445,392. John McClellan, chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee, named Harris to chair a Special Subcommittee on Government Research on August 20, 1964.

In 1966 Harris's reelection was opposed by Oklahoma City attorney Pat J. Patterson. Among other issues Patterson sought to embarrass Harris by endorsing the constitutional amendment proposed by Sen. Everett M. Dirksen allowing school boards to provide for prayers in public schools. The proposal garnered enthusiastic support in Oklahoma, but it did not win Harris's approval. He explained his position in a letter sent to every fifth resident: "I believe in the separation of church and state and I believe prayer and Bible reading should be voluntary." On November 8 Harris handily defeated Patterson by 343,157 votes to 295,983.

After a series of devastating race riots, in March 1968 the president appointed Harris to the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Hubert Humphrey, who as vice president sought to further Harris's career by appointing him to select committees with overseas assignments, seriously considered him as his running mate in the 1968 presidential campaign. Selecting Edmund S. Muskie for the post, Humphrey asked Harris to co-manage his unsuccessful campaign for the presidency against Richard M. Nixon. Before leaving office, Humphrey chose Harris to chair the Democratic National Committee, a post he held for about a year, resigning early in 1970.

A sharp criticism of the policies pursued by the Nixon administration became the basis of Haris’s two abortive runs for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 and 1976. Lack of funds slowed his campaigns, and Harris at an early date withdrew his candidacy.

After dropping out of the presidential marathon in 1976, Harris departed the political scene. He reinvented himself as a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico, where he was an effective teacher and author of several best-selling textbooks. In the late 1990s he served as chair of the New Mexico Democratic Party and in 1999 launched a new career as a writer of fiction.

Achievements

• Former Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris is known in political circles as a progressive Democrat and advocate for federal assistance to the poor. At age thirty-three Harris was the youngest senator-elect in the history of Oklahoma. In his freshman year Harris presided for almost 120 hours over sessions of the Senate, more than any other member including the vice president and president pro tempore. He answered almost every roll call and had one of the highest voting records in the chamber.
  
  In addition, he was the author or co-author of more than a dozen bills introduced during his first session, including a measure creating a Regional Development Commission for the Ozarka Region, encompassing eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, and southern Missouri. He also served on three major Senate committees and nine subcommittees. He was one of the very few freshmen senators ever to be named chair of a subcommittee - Special Subcommittee on Government Research. Working through his subcommittee, Harris also endeavored to help develop a national science policy. In 1965 the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce named him one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Year.
  
  Harris is also known in academic circles as a writer and editor on political and social issues, drawing from his own experience of the legislative process. Harris has become known in literary circles as the author of well-received whodunits based in Depression-era Oklahoma. As the author of Potomac Fever and other works on the Lyndon Johnson administration, he could well have rested on his laurels, but he is instead enjoying his new status as a mystery writer.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Coyote Revenge

    (Okie Dunn returns to his Oklahoma home in the midst of th...)

    1999
  • Deadlock or Decision

    (In Deadlock or Decision, Harris provides a far-reaching l...)

    1993
  • Following the Harvest

    (Following the Harvest tells the story of sixteen-year-old...)

    2004
  • Does People Do It?

    (A child of the Great Depression, Harris grew up in the sm...)

    2008
  • Easy Pickin's

    (In a small Oklahoma town in the 1930s, an unexpected crim...)

    2000
  • Quiet Riots: Race and Poverty in the United States

    (Discusses the Kerner Report of 1968, looks at urban pover...)

    1988
  • Understanding American Government

    (Basic principles of the US government; politics; policyma...)

    1988
  • In Defense of Congress

    (Former U.S. Senator Fred R. Harris draws on traditional a...)

    1994
  • Alarms and Hopes 1968
  • Potomac Fever 1977
  • Now Is The Time: A New Populist Call To Action 1971
  • The New Populism 1973
  • America's Democracy: The Ideal and the Reality 1980
  • America's Government 1990
  • America's Legislative Processes: Congress and the States 1983
  • Locked in the Poorhouse: Cities, Race, and Poverty in the United States 1998

Politics

Throughout his senatorial career Harris promoted rural development and was a firm friend of agricultural programs as a way of slowing rural migration to urban areas. As a member of the Public Works Committee he furthered his predecessor's goal in guiding through Congress legislation carrying forward the Arkansas River navigation program, and tributary development, including the construction of dams in Oklahoma. Like all members of the Oklahoma delegation he worked to further Indian health and community development. Early in his career he also exhibited an interest in foreign policy, seeking to curtail assistance to countries that violate human rights or manifest hostility to the United States.

Following his re-election Harris, joining his colleague Birch Bayh and their wives, visited at his own expense several countries in South America to familiarize himself with Latin America and the effect of federal aid projects. In the Senate he remained a firm supporter of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs.

Being appointed to the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders also known as the Kerner comission, Harris quickly became one of the most active members and was deeply concerned about the plight of economically deprived inner-city African Americans. The commission concluded that poverty born of racism and lack of opportunity had fostered extreme frustration, especially in inner cities. Liberal members of the Kerner Commission recommended a massive federal commitment to improving the lot of minorities and the poor, thus sparking a debate on the government’s role in social engineering that continues to this day. Shortly thereafter Harris broke with the administration over its Vietnam policy, emerging as a critic who soon was calling for troop reduction and then for withdrawal from military operations in Southeast Asia.

As head of the the Democratic National Committee he selected two committees designed to open the party to more active participation by minorities and women. While seeking broader participation in the party, he also had to deal with mounting dissatisfaction on the part of Southern Democrats, who were leaving the party of their fathers in increasing numbers. Meanwhile, in the Senate he played a major role in restoring to the Taos Pueblo its sacred Blue Lake lands, in championing the cause of Alaska Eskimos seeking to retain a large portion of their land claims, in protesting the wholesale slaughter of seals, and in changing the roles of the Democratic caucus to exclude senators who did not support the party's presidential nominee.

At the same time he became a sharp critic of the policies pursued by the Nixon administration, and he called for a fairer distribution of wealth and income and power by insisting that government serve the people and not the special interests. His criticisms merged into what he called the New Populism.

Views

Quotations: "The American system looks simple, but it is a labyrinth of complexity. I enjoy writing about it, to make it more understandable - not just how a bill goes through Congress, but also why, for example - to point the way for citizen participation and suggest ways to make participation opportunities better."

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world."

"There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind."

"If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."

"Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else."

"As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has-or ever will have-something inside that is unique to all time."

Membership

Fred Harris was a member of Order of Coif and Phi Beta Kappa.

Connections

On April 8, 1949, Fred married LaDonna Crawford, but they divorced in 1981. On September 5, 1982, Harris married Margaret S. Elliston. Harris has three children - Kathryn, Byron and Laura.

Father:

Fred Byron Harris

Mother:

Eunice Alene (Person)

Daughter:

Kathryn Harris

Son:

Byron Harris

Daughter:

Laura Harris

ex-wife:

LaDonna Crawford

LaDonna Vita Tabbytite Harris (born February 26, 1931) is a Comanche Native American social activist and politician from Oklahoma. She is the founder and president of Americans for Indian Opportunity.

Wife:

Margaret S. Elliston

References

• The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture -Two Volumes The two-volume. 1700-page contains 2,455 entries including biographies, geographical features, town and country histories, major events and historical movements, and much, more about the state of Oklahoma and its people.
  2009