Patricia Roberts Harris

Patricia Roberts Harris (May 31, 1924 – March 23, 1985) served as United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the last United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and the first United States Secretary of Health and Human Services in the administration of President Jimmy Carter.

Born Patricia Roberts in Mattoon, Illinois, Harris graduated summa cum laude from Howard University in 1945. While at Howard, she was elected Phi Beta Kappa. There she met William Beasley Harris, a member of the Howard law faculty, they were married in 1955. She did postgraduate work at the University of Chicago and at American University in 1949. Until 1953, she worked as Assistant Director of the American Council on Human Rights. She was the first national executive of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, to which she was a member. Roberts later graduated from the George Washington University National Law Center in 1960.

Graduating number one out of a class of 94, she was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. Attorney Harris worked briefly for the U.S. Department of Justice before returning, in 1961, to Howard University as an associate dean of students and law lecturer at Howard's law school. In 1963, she was elevated to a full professorship and, in 1969, she was named Dean of Howard University's School of Law.

Her first position with the U.S. government was as an attorney in the appeals and research section of the criminal division of the Department of Justice in 1960. There she met and struck up a friendship with Robert Kennedy, the new attorney general. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy appointed her co-chairman of the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights.

In 1964, Patricia Harris was elected a delegate to the Democratic National Convention from the District of Columbia. She worked in Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign and seconded his nomination at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Soon after his victory, President Johnson appointed her Ambassador to Luxembourg from 1965 to 1967. Following her service as Dean of Howard's School of Law from 1969 to 1972, she joined one of Washington, D.C.'s most prestigious law firms.

She continued making an impact on the Democratic Party when, in 1972, she was appointed chairman of the credentials committee and a member-at-large of the Democratic National Committee in 1973. A testimony to her effectiveness and her commitment to excellence came when President Jimmy Carter appointed her to two cabinet level posts during his administration.



Harris was the first African American woman to serve as an Ambassador, representing the U.S. in Luxembourg under President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Harris was appointed to the cabinet of President Jimmy Carter upon his election 1977. She thus became the first African American woman to enter the line of succession, at number 13. Between 1977 and 1979 she served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and in 1979, she served as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

After the Department of Education Organization Act was signed into law on October 17, 1979, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare was divided into the separate departments of Health and Human Services and Education. Harris then served as the first Secretary of Health and Human Services until Carter left office in 1981. She unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Washington, D.C., in 1982.

In 1982, Patricia Harris was appointed a full-time professor at the George Washington National Law Center, a position she served in until her death on March 23, 1985, at the age of 60.