Patricia Roberts Harris

Patricia Roberts Harris (May 31, 1924 – March 23, 1985) was an American politician, diplomat, and legal scholar. She served as the 6th United States secretary of housing and urban development from 1977 to 1979 and as the 13th United States secretary of health and human services from 1979 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter.

Born and raised in Illinois, She previously served as the United States ambassador to Luxembourg from 1965 to 1967 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Throughout her public career, Harris was a trailblazer for women and people of color to hold a number of positions, including the first African American woman and woman of color ever to serve in a presidential cabinet and the first woman and person of color appointed to two different presidential cabinet positions. She was the first African American HHS secretary and just the second black HUD secretary, as well as the second woman to lead either of those executive departments. Furthermore, she was the first black woman U.S. ambassador, the dean of a U.S. law school, and a member of a Fortune 500 company's board of directors. A member of the Democratic Party, she ran for mayor of the District of Columbia in the 1982 mayoral election but was defeated during the primaries, ultimately finishing second to incumbent mayor Marion Barry.

Patricia Roberts was born on May 31, 1924, in Mattoon, Illinois, the daughter of railroad dining car waiter Bert Fitzgerald Roberts and Hildren Brodie (née Johnson). She had one younger brother, Malcolm, known to his family as Mickey. Her parents separated when she was 6 years old, after which she was raised primarily by her mother and grandmother, attending public school in Chicago.

After earning scholarships to five different colleges, Roberts selected Howard University, from which she graduated, summa cum laude, in 1945. While at Howard, she was elected Phi Beta Kappa and served as Vice Chairman of the Howard University chapter of the NAACP. During her time at Howard University, she was also a member of Delta Sigma Theta — a historically Black sorority that had been founded at Patricia's alma mater in 1913. In 1943, she participated in one of the nation's first lunch counter sit-ins. She did graduate work in industrial relations at the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1949. In order to be better involved in civil rights work, she transferred to American University in 1949, where she would ultimately receive her Master's Degree.

After marrying in 1955, Harris was beginning to pursue a career in education, but saw limited opportunity because of segregation. Her husband encouraged her to go to law school, and she received her J.D. from the George Washington University National Law Center in 1960, ranking number one out of a class of ninety-four students. She passed the bar exam the same year.

In 1965, Harris was honored in absentia with the Alumni Achievement Award of George Washington University Law School.

While studying in Chicago, Roberts was a program director for the Young Women's Christian Association. While at American University, she concurrently worked as the Assistant Director of the American Council on Human Rights, beginning in 1949 and staying until 1953. Her first position with the U.S. government was in 1960 as an attorney in the appeals and research section of the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice. There she met and struck up a friendship with Robert F. Kennedy, the new attorney general.

One year later, Harris took a job as a lecturer and the Associate Dean of Students at Howard University. In 1963, she ceased her role as Dean, but stayed on as a lecturer. Concurrently, from 1962–65, she worked with the National Capital Area Civil Liberties Union. As her skills as an organizer bloomed, Harris also became increasingly involved in the Democratic Party. In 1963, she was elevated to a full professorship at Howard, and President John F. Kennedy appointed her co-chairman of the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights, described as an "umbrella organization encompassing some 100 women's groups throughout the nation." Her co-chair was Mildred McAfee Horton.