Duchess Harris

Duchess Harris is an African American academic, author, and legal scholar. She is professor and chair of American studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, specializing in black feminism, U.S. law, and African American political movements. Her book, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Obama, was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2009, and with Bruce Baum she co-edited Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity, published by Duke University Press in 2009. In 2011 she received her J.D. from the William Mitchell College of Law. Her young adult text, Black Lives Matter, is co-authored with Sue Bradford Edwards. She was the 2015 recipient of the MN Association of Black Lawyers "Profiles in Courage Award." Harris is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. On March 26, 2016 Zeta Phi Beta sorority named her "Woman of the Year." http://themacweekly.com/2016/04/professor-and-author-duchess-harris-named-zeta-phi-betas-woman-of-the-year/ Her fourth book was published December 15th, 2016. 'Hidden Human Computers: The Black Women of NASA" is about the Black women who did mathematical calculations for John Glen to go to the moon. Harris was motivated to write this book with Sue Bradford Edwards because her grandmother was in the group of the first 11 recruited to work at NASA. It’s an important story, important enough to be included in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and now Harris and others are telling the tale of how women like Harris’ grandmother and namesake, Miriam Mann, were recruited to work as engineers for still-segregated NASA in the 1940s. In December, the tale will receive the Hollywood treatment via “Hidden Figures,” a Ted Melfi-directed and Janelle Monae-starring biopic of the pioneering women. But Harris’ real-life version is compelling all on its own.

Harris was born in Virginia. Her maternal grandmother, Miriam Daniel Mann, was a mathematician at NASA.

When she was fourteen, Harris received an academic scholarship to attend Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. After graduation, she was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania. She was elected student body president. Her activism was reported in Wayne Glasker's, Black Students in the Ivory Tower: African American Student Activism at the University of Pennsylvania, 1967-1990. In 1991, Harris earned her Bachelor of Arts in American history and Afro-American studies, and in 1997 she earned her PhD in American studies from the University of Minnesota. That same year she was named one of "Thirty Young Leaders of the Future" by Ebony Magazine. She joined the faculty at Macalester College in 1998.

She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School under the direction of john a. powell, was a policy fellow for the Hubert. H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, and served on the Shirley Chisholm Presidential Accountability Commission in 2010. Her writing and commentary have appeared in Litigation News, The Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, and Race-Talk. While at law school, she co-founded the William Mitchell Law Raza Journal, an online, interactive scholarly publication on the issues of race and the law. Her scholarship has been supported through a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellowship.

Harris lectures and speaks on the subjects of race, law, and feminism.