Harris, Patricia Roberts (b. May 31, 1924, Mattoon, Ill.; d. March 23, 1985, Washington, D.C.), first black American woman to serve as an ambassador, a cabinet secretary, and a law school dean.

Patricia Roberts was born and raised in a working-class suburb of Chicago. She accepted a scholarship from Howard University in Washington, D.C., where in 1943 she participated in one of the country's first student sit-ins, at a whites-only cafeteria in a black neighborhood. She later attended law school at Washington's George Washington University, from which she graduated first in her class. In 1961, she joined the faculty of Howard Law School.

A lifelong Democrat, Harris served on several federal commissions concerned with minority rights. In 1965, largely on the strength of this work, President Johnson appointed her U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. After a brief and noncontroversial posting, she returned to Howard in 1967 and in 1969 was named dean of the law school. Immediately after her appointment, students protested for greater power in university decisions. Harris took a strong stand against them and, when she felt she was not supported by the school's president, resigned. She had served as dean for one month. For the next eight years she practiced law in a Washington firm and continued her national party activities.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter nominated Harris secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Her confirmation hearings were contentious, mostly because liberals feared her close connection to "the establishment" would make her unsympathetic to HUD's poor constituency. In a well-publicized reply to such fears, Harris told the Senate, "You do not seem to understand who I am. I'm a black woman, the daughter of a dining car waiter. . . . I am a black woman who could not buy a house eight years ago in parts of the District of Columbia." She was confirmed, the first black woman to direct a federal department. During her tenure, she secured greater funding for HUD, which she used to dramatically increase the number of new subsidized homes and to rehabilitate rather than destroy old homes. She also promoted grants to attract businesses to blighted areas and vouchers to give poor people greater choice in housing.

In 1979, Carter appointed Harris secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), later the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). At HEW, her main task was protecting social programs from the budget cuts of the late 1970s. Her tenure was cut short by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

In 1982, Harris ran for mayor of Washington against incumbent Marion Barry. In a bitter campaign, Barry depicted her as the elitist candidate of the middle and upper classes who had lost touch with Washington's large population of poor blacks. Harris was soundly defeated in the primary. For the next two years, she taught law at George Washington University. She died of breast cancer a few months after the death of her husband.




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