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Content provided by the American Bar Association Division for Public Education. Visit the Division for Public Education's website to learn more about the law and its role in society (www.abanet.org/publiced). For more profiles of pioneers in the legal profession, visit the Division for Public Education's Raising the Bar: Pioneers in the Legal Profession website at www.abanet.org/publiced/raisingthebar.html.
Patricia Roberts Harris
(1924 - 1985)
(1924 - 1985)
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Patricia Roberts Harris was the first African American woman to serve as a cabinet member, as an ambassador to a European country, and as dean of a law school. Patricia Roberts Harris was a woman who distinguished herself throughout her legal career, and yet never forgot her roots or the importance of advocating on behalf of the poor. She was born to Bert Fitzgerald and Hildren Brodie Roberts on May 31, 1924 in Mattoon, Illinois, and soon moved with her parents and brother to Chicago. After graduating from Englewood High School on Chicago's Southside, she worked for a year to save money for college. From 1942 to 1945, she attended college at Howard University in Washington, D.C., graduating summa cum laude a year ahead of schedule. Mrs. Harris returned to Chicago where she was a graduate student at the University of Chicago and worked as a program director for the Chicago Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA.) In 1949, she was hired by the American Council on Human Rights, a civil rights agency, as assistant director, and moved to D.C. to manage the agency's political action and legislative programs. When Delta Sigma Theta Sorority created a national headquarters in 1953, the 29-year-old Patricia Roberts Harris was hired as its first executive director. Soon afterwards, she met her future husband, William Beasley Harris, an attorney who encouraged her to enroll in law school. She continued to work full time while attending George Washington University Law School and graduated first in her class in 1960. Mrs. Harris was a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice criminal division for a year before joining the staff of Howard University as associate dean of students and lecturer in law, later becoming professor of law. In 1965, her teaching career was interrupted when President Lyndon Johnson appointed her ambassador to Luxembourg, the first African-American to be named an ambassador to a European nation. She served in this capacity for two years before returning to teach at Howard, where she was appointed dean of the law school in 1969. In 1970, Mrs. Harris joined a D.C. law firm and began practicing corporate law. In 1977, she was appointed U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by President Jimmy Carter, the first African American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. Two years later, President Carter named her Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW.) As head of HEW, Mrs. Harris was responsible for managing a budget that was surpassed in size only by those of Russia and the United States. Under her leadership, HEW was reorganized into two separate departments, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Education. In 1981, Mrs. Harris returned to private life as a professor at George Washington National Law Center. Soon afterwards, she was to run against first term Washington Mayor Marion Barry, but was defeated in a divisive election campaign. On March 23, 1985, she succumbed to cancer, just months after her husband died unexpectedly of a stroke in November, 1984. From her student days at Howard University, Mrs. Harris was interested in politics and continued to be a political activist throughout her career. When passage of the twenty-third amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1961 gave District of Columbia residents the right to vote in national elections for the first time, Mrs. Harris was one of three of the District's first presidential electors. President John F. Kennedy appointed her in 1963 to co-chair the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights. In 1964, she was elected a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and was selected to second Lyndon Johnson's presidential nomination at the convention. In 1972, she was appointed chair of the credentials committee and a member-at-large of the Democratic National Committee in 1973. She also served as a member of several national policy committees, including the National Advisory Committee on Reform of Federal Criminal Law in 1967 and the Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence from 1968 to 1969. With her financial skills and business expertise, Mrs. Harris was invited to sit on several major corporate boards of directors in the 1970s. She was the first African American woman to serve on the boards of International Business Machine (IBM), Scott Paper Company, Chase Manhattan Bank, and Georgetown University. Despite her prominence and success, however, Mrs. Harris never forgot her humble beginnings. At the Senate confirmation committee hearings to approve her appointment as head of Housing and Urban Development, a U.S. senator tried to suggest that Mrs. Harris's position might make her ill-qualified to represent the underclass. She shot back her no-nonsense reply: "I am one of them. You do not seem to understand who I am. I am a Black woman, the daughter of a dining-car worker. I am a Black woman who could not buy a house eight years ago in parts of the District of Columbia!" Sources: The website for the successful campaign to have a commemorative stamp issued in Ms. Harris's honor, www.prh2000.org, Afro-American Almanac at www.toptags.com/aama/bio/women/pharris.htm, Social Security Administration website at www.ssa.gov/history/harris.html. (Originally published in 2001) |
