Patricia Roberts Pictures, Biography, Images, Videos, News

Born on May 31, 1924, in Mattoon, Illinois, to working class parents, Patricia Roberts Harris exemplified a true American success story. Educated in the Chicago public schools, Harris attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude in 1945. While at Howard, she served as vice-president of a student chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and led a demonstration which helped integrate a white restaurant located in a black section of Washington.

After graduation Harris returned to Chicago and pursued graduate studies in industrial relations at the University of Chicago. During this time she also worked as program director of the local Young Women's Christian Association. In 1949 she journeyed back to Washington and enrolled in American University for further graduate study. Along with her education, Harris kept busy as assistant director of the American Council of Human Rights and, after 1953, as executive director of Delta Sigma Theta, an African American sorority. She kept that position until 1959, when she entered the George Washington University Law School, partially because of the urging of William Beasley Harris, a Washington attorney whom she married in 1955. Patricia Harris graduated first in her class in 1960 and took a position as attorney with the appeals and research section of the criminal division of the Department of Justice. After serving there for two years she joined Howard University as assistant professor and associate dean of the law school. While at Howard, President John Kennedy appointed her chairperson of the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights, an unpaid position to create and coordinate support from women's groups for a new civil rights bill.

The hard work and loyalty of this life-long Democrat paid off when she was asked to second the presidential nomination of Lyndon Johnson at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Later that year the president named Harris to the 13-member Commission on the Status of Puerto Rico. Impressed with her diplomatic skills, Johnson appointed Harris the first female African American ambassador in U.S. history when he made her ambassador to Luxembourg in 1965.