Jerry D. Thompson, Ph.D.

Jerry D. Thompson, Ph.D.

Jerry Thompson is Regents and Piper Professor of History at Texas A&M International University in Laredo and a highly decorated historian. He has been honored by the Arizona Historical Society, the Historical Society of New Mexico, and the Texas State Historical Association. Thompson is a three-time recipient of the Best Scholarly Book Award from the Texas Institute of Letters for Civil War to the Bitter End: The Life and Times of Major General Samuel Peter Heintzelman, Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas, and Tejano Tiger: Jose de los Santos Benavides and the History of the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891, which was also 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, co-authored with Larry Jones, and has earned the Tejano Book Award three times.

Thompson’s exceptional teaching and academic achievements have earned him the Senator Judith Zaffarini Medal and the Texas A&M University System Teaching Excellence Award. He holds a BA in history from Western New Mexico University, an MA in history from the University of New Mexico, and a doctorate in history from Carnegie Mellon University. A former president of the Texas State Historical Association, Thompson has published a wide range of acclaimed works, including A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia and Wrecked Lives and Lost Souls: Joe Lynch Davis and the Last of the Oklahoma Outlaws, the story of his Cherokee outlaw grandfather. His most recent book, Under the Pinon Tree: Finding a Place in Pie Town, was published in 2023 by the University of New Mexico Press.

Thompson is married to Dr. Sara Amparo Cabello, a professor at Laredo College, and they have one son, Jeremy, a graduate of Rice University.