Fred Harris is the last surviving member of the Kerner Rights Commission, famously created by President Lyndon Johnson following the terrible riots, disorders, and violent protests that exploded in so many of America’s cities in the “long hot summer” of 1967. He is the last survivor of the 1964 “Four Back Bench US Senators,” which consisted of Walter Mondale of Minnesota, Joseph Tydings of Maryland, Fred Harris of Oklahoma, and Robert Kennedy of New York. He is also the senior surviving former member of the US Senate and one of two “last surviving” Democratic presidential candidates to run in 1976—the other being President Jimmy Carter Jr.

Report from a Last Survivor tells Fred Harris’s many stories: some serious, some funny, and all true. Each story forms a part of this report of a last survivor, a long look back over ninety-three years and counting of a rich life of public service and personal commitment.

Former US Senator Fred Harris (1930–2024) was a professor emeritus of political science at the University of New Mexico as well a director emeritus of the UNM Fred Harris Congressional Internship Program. He produced twenty nonfiction books on public policy, politics, and government, including the coedited Locked in the Poorhouse: Cities, Race, and Poverty in the United States, as well as three novels.