If you have ever dived into Laredo’s rich history, you have surely encountered the name Jerry Thompson. Dr. Thompson, Regents and Piper Professor of History at Texas A&M International University, has written by far the most books about Laredo history. His most popular, Laredo: A Pictorial History, provides a visual snapshot of Laredo’s past and can be seen in homes and offices across town.
One of the most fascinating things about Thompson as Laredo’s premier historian is that he was neither born nor raised here, but rather in the small Arizona town of Springerville on November 21, 1942.
“People always assume that I’m Mormon when they see where I was born, but the only reason I was born there is because this was the nearest hospital,” Thompson said.
He documents his early years in his book Under the Piñon Tree, a set of childhood recollections of growing up in a very rural part of New Mexico bordering Arizona.
“I rode the school bus for over 50 miles a day for eight years to get an education in Pie Town, New Mexico, a little settlement of Dust Bowl refugees. Today, the place is nothing, the school long since closed,” he said.
This early upbringing where schools were scarce instilled in him the value of education that he carries to this day. He currently serves as senior history professor at TAMIU. After growing up at 8,000 feet elevation, which he described as a place of brutal winters and delightful summers, he arrived in Laredo in the brutal summer of 1968 in a car without air conditioning. It was 105 degrees on his first day. He began teaching at Laredo Junior College, earning an annual salary of $6,500. His classroom also lacked A/C, requiring humungous fans like airplane propellers that deafened the classroom.
Thompson arrived in Laredo during a volatile political period not just for the United States but also for Laredo, in the waning years of the Mayor J.C. Martin regime. He recalled an occasion when he was helping his wife’s uncle run for office in West Laredo when somebody shot a bullet through the front window. On another occasion, he joined Chicano activist Chaca Ramírez in a demonstration against the Washington’s Birthday Parade only to be forcibly escorted out of the public eye by local police.
It was clear to Thompson from the very beginning that he had arrived in a peculiar place. As he began learning about the city’s history, he was further perplexed that few people had cared to seriously document Laredo. Aside from a handful of articles about Laredo by Sebron Wilcox in The Southwestern Quarterly, nobody had ever seriously written about the city’s rich history, including a significant Civil War skirmish in 1864 led by Confederate Colonel Santos Benavides.
Researching Laredo’s history is particularly challenging. Historically, our own people have had little interest in our own culture and history. This challenge is exemplified by the fact that many of the very earliest archives from the Villa de San Agustin have been lost. Many Laredo archives were collecting dust in a closet and nearly lost forever before they were accidentally discovered and now held by St. Mary’s University.
Despite these challenges, Thompson began publishing historical articles in The Laredo Times about the city’s early years, which he eventually compiled into a dramatic account of Laredo’s volatile and often violent early history in Sabers on the Rio Grande.
Thompson then got a grant to continue his research, which allowed him to publish another book focused on the contributions of Tejanos, including Laredoans, in the U.S. Civil War in Vaqueros in Blue and Gray.
By far his most ambitious and challenging project was Defending the Mexican Name in Texas, a biography of the life and work of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, who both defended oppressed Mexicans in the Rio Grande Valley in the aftermath of the U.S.-Mexico War and later fought with the Union against figures like Colonel Santos Benavides in the Civil War. He said this book was particularly challenging because the relevant sources were “scattered everywhere” – in Ciudad Victoria, Monterrey, Matamoros, and Mexico City. Because of the Spanish handwriting in the old archival documents, Thompson required the assistance of a research assistant in Mexico City.
The rights to Cortina were recently purchased by a producer of the 2002 film Frida, for a possible Netflix program.
From dusty, forgotten archives to a possible television series, there is no doubt that much of Laredo’s history might be buried forever without Thompson’s work. On the advice he would give to writers interested in following in his footsteps, he has some very simple advice.
“Throw your TV and cell phone into the Río Grande. You just need time and isolation. It’s very hard to write when you’re teaching a class for one hour and then having to write the next hour. It’s much easier when you’re in the mountains of New Mexico where the only sound is the birds in the trees.”
Somehow, his successful teaching career spanning over 50 years hasn’t stopped him from writing nearly 20 books.
About Dr. Jerry Thompson
Thompson is the recipient of numerous awards and honors from the Arizona Historical Society, Historical Society of New Mexico, and the Texas State Historical Association. He has received the Best Scholarly Book Award from the Texas Institute of Letters three times. First, for his Civil War to the Bitter End: The Life and Times of Major General Samuel Peter Heintzelman, his biography of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina entitled Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas, and more recently for his Tejano Tiger: Jose de los Santos Benavides and the History of the Texas-Mexico Borderlands,1823-1891, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He received the Kate Broocks Bates Award from the Texas State Historical Association for Civil War and Revolution on the Rio Grande Frontier, which he co-authored with Larry Jones. He has also received the Tejano Book Award three times. First for his biography of Cortina, then his Tejanos in Gray: The Civil War Letters of Captains Manuel Yturria and Rafael de la Garza, and more recently for his Tejano Tiger. Thompson has also received the Senator Judith Zaffirini Medal for his teaching excellence and academic accomplishments, as well as the Texas A&M University System Teaching Excellence Award.
Thompson received his doctorate in history from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a former president of the Texas State Historical Association. At the present time, he serves on the Editorial Board for The Southwestern Historical Quarterly. His A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia won the Fray Atanasio Francisco Dominguez Award from the New Mexico Historical Association and the Pate Award from the Fort Worth Civil War Round Table. His most recent book by the University of Oklahoma Press, Wrecked Lives and Lost Souls: Joe Lynch Davis and the Last of the Oklahoma Outlaws, is the story of Thompson’s Cherokee outlaw grandfather.
Thompson’s Courage Above All Things: General John Ellis Wool and the American Military Experience, 1812-1863 (with Harwood P. Hinton) was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2020. Thompson is married to Dr. Sara Amparo Cabello, a professor at Laredo College, and they have one son, Jeremy, a graduate of TAMIU and Rice University.
(Ryan Cantú was born and raised in Laredo and has 10 years of experience in various areas of civil litigation. He is a lover and supporter of the arts and serves on the board of the Laredo Film Society. In addition to writing articles for Texas publications, he is currently writing a book under contract with Texas Tech University Press about the culinary traditions of South Texas and Northeastern Mexico. )
