Patricia Roberts Harris graduated summa cum laude from Howard University before earning her law degree at George Washington University, where she graduated first in her class. Her early career combined legal practice with civil rights activism, including participation in some of the first lunch counter sit-ins in Washington, D.C., during the 1940s, long before such protests became a defining tactic of the movement.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Harris as Ambassador to Luxembourg, making her the first Black woman in American history to serve as a U.S. ambassador. She went on to become dean of Howard University's School of Law, and in 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed her Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, making her the first Black woman to hold a U.S. Cabinet position.
Harris later served as Secretary of Health and Human Services, becoming the first person in American history to hold two different Cabinet positions. Throughout her career in government, she remained an outspoken advocate for the poor, pressing colleagues in both roles to ensure federal housing and health policy served communities that had long been overlooked.
I am not one of the individuals who has been left out of the American dream, but I stand before you as a symbol of what happens to those who have.
Patricia Roberts Harris broke barriers in diplomacy, legal education, and the federal Cabinet within a single career, opening doors that had been closed to Black women in American government for nearly two centuries. Her insistence on centring the needs of the poor within federal housing and health policy left a lasting mark on both departments she led.
- 1924Born in Mattoon, Illinois.
- 1945Graduates summa cum laude from Howard University.
- 1960Graduates first in her class from George Washington University Law School.
- 1965Appointed U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg — the first Black woman in U.S. history to serve as an ambassador.
- 1969Becomes dean of Howard University School of Law.
- 1977Appointed U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development — the first Black woman in a U.S. Cabinet position.
- 1979Appointed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, becoming the first person to hold two different Cabinet posts.
- 1985Dies in Washington, D.C., at age 60.
- ★ First Black woman to serve as a U.S. ambassador (Luxembourg, 1965)
- ★ First Black woman to hold a U.S. Cabinet position (HUD Secretary, 1977)
- ★ First person in U.S. history to hold two different Cabinet positions
- ★ First Black woman to serve as dean of a U.S. law school (Howard University)