July 19, 1979

Jet, July 26, 2004

Patricia Roberts Harris was appointed on this day by President Jimmy Carter as secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare. A native of Mattoon, IL, Harris, the daughter of a Pullman waiter father and a schoolteacher mother, earned a bachelor's degree at Howard. In 1960, she graduated from George Washington University's National Law Center.

Harris was the first Black woman to become an appointed to Luxembourg by President don Johnson in 1965. As dean of Howard University Law School in 1969, she became the first Black woman to head a law school. Harris was a professor at George Washington University when she died of cancer in 1985 at age 60.