Dr. Benjamin Heber Johnson, assistant professor of history at Southern Methodist University, will speak at San Antonio College on Thursday, March 24 at 9:30-10:45 a.m. in the Visual Arts & Technology Center, Room 120.  He will discuss and answer questions about his book "Revolution in Texas:  How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans," published in 2003 by Yale University Press.  An informal discussion will follow.  The event is free and open to the public.

"Revolution in Texas" was a finalist for the 2004 Caroline Bancroft Western History Prize sponsored by the Denver Public Library.  It is a narrative about a little-known uprising in 1915 by ethnic Mexicans against ranches and railroads - known as the Plan de San Diego.  This became a regional rebellion, which was quelled by a counterinsurgency led by vigilante groups and the Texas Rangers, resulting in forcible relocations and mass executions.

Johnson's book "carefully documents what has been a whitewashed version of South Texas history," said Jan Jarboe Russell in the San Antonio Express-News.
      
Larry McMurtry said the book "is a clear, absorbing analysis of a bloody but little-known revolt along a border that's been troubled ever since it was a border . . . The book does much to explain why Mexican-American identity is the complex fate we know it to be today."

Historian Mario T. Garcia said, "Benjamin Johnson has written the definitive study of the Plan de San Diego and the ethnic tensions between Mexicans and Anglos in Texas during the early part of the 20th Century.  He has elevated a localized conflict to a sophisticated analysis of race and ethnic wars in American culture."
      
Johnson earned his B.A. from Carleton College, summa cum laude, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University.  In addition to writings about the history of the Texas-Mexico border, Johnson has published articles about the corporate university, the American labor movement, and North American environmental history. 

Before coming to SMU, Johnson taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio, California Institute of Technology, the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Field Station, and Yale University.  He was also a writer and researcher for Lifetime Learning, Inc., an Internet companion to the Public Broadcasting System series "The West." 

Johnson has received numerous grants, fellowships, and awards, including a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Ralph W. Hidy Award from the Forest History Society for the best article in the journal "Environmental History."  He won the Frederick Beinecke Prize for best dissertation in western history at Yale University. 
 
For more information about "Revolution in Texas," see the Yale University website at http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/Viewbook.asp?isbn=0300094256. For more information, contact Carla L. Mendiola, San Antonio College history instructor, at 733-2564.