Black History Makers: Patricia Roberts Harris, Cabinet Secretary

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Patricia Roberts Harris was born in Mattoon, Illinois to Bert Fitzgerald Roberts, a Pullman car waiter, and Hildren Brodie Johnson, a schoolteacher, on May 31, 1924. After graduating from high school in Chicago, Harris enrolled at Howard University, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1945.

The Honorable Patricia Roberts Harris

Harris later completed post graduate work at the University of Chicago while serving as Executive Director of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority; in 1960, Harris graduated first in her law school class at George Washington University.

After a brief stint at the Justice Department, Harris became an associate dean and professor at the Howard University School of Law. During that decade, Harris made history by being appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to serve as the first Black Ambassador to Luxembourg. In the picture below, Ambassador Harris is standing to the left of Dr. Martin Luther King (right in this photo) as they greet President Johnson immediately after he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.

In 1969, Harris was named the Dean of the Howard Law School and eight years later, she made history yet again when President Jimmy Carter nominated her to serve in his cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 1979, Secretary Harris switched roles by becoming the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. When Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act into law in 1979, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare was divided into the separate Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education, and from that point forward, Harris served as the first Secretary of Health and Human Services—where she would remain until Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in the 1980 election.

Harris spent the bulk of the next four years as a professor at her law school alma mater, George Washington University and tragically, in 1985, she succumbed to breast cancer at the age of 60.

Lest we forget...