Erna P. Harris | |
|---|---|
 Harris in her signature beret, 1933 | |
| Born | Erna Prather Harris June 29, 1908 |
| Died | March 9, 1995 (aged 86) |
| Alma mater | Wichita State University |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1936–1980s |
Erna Prather Harris (June 29, 1908 – March 9, 1995) was an American journalist, businesswoman, and activist, known for her pacifism. Born in Oklahoma, she grew up in the segregated South and attended Black schools. After graduating from Douglass High School in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, she worked as a maid to earn enough money to attend an integrated university. Graduating from Wichita State University in 1936, and unable to find work, she opened her own newspaper, The Kansas Journal.
The Kansas Journal was a successful Black publication until 1939, when she lost her advertisers because of an editorial she wrote opposing the draft. Moving to California, she worked as an editor for the Los Angeles Tribune, writing articles about racist policies such as segregation of blood supplies, immigration, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. She led protests in the 1940s against segregation in the military and in favor of conscientious objection. After being targeted by the FBI and McCarthyism, she criticized the House Un-American Activities Committee's activities. In the 1950s, she moved to Seattle, where she published a journal, Bias, advocating for peaceful cooperation, before moving to Berkeley, California, and operating a duplication and printing shop until her retirement.
Harris joined numerous pacifist organizations, including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Workers' Defense League, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). She served as chair of the Berkeley branch of the WILPF in 1956, was twice appointed as a regional vice president of the national section and served on the national WILPF executive board. As a member of the WILPF's Civil Rights Committee, she was instrumental in pressing the organization to support school integration after the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education and boycotts against companies supporting South African Apartheid. She was a delegate at three of WILPF's international congresses, 1956, 1965, and 1971.
Harris supported World Federalism as a means to maintain global peace, and attended a US–USSR summit in 1964 to promote cooperation between women. Involved in many issues, she opposed nuclear proliferation, Cuban isolationism, intervention in Latin America, the Vietnam War, California Proposition 6, and discrimination of any kind. In her later years, she became involved in the Consumers' Cooperative of Berkeley and the Gray Panthers. As a board member of the cooperative, she helped plan the 1978 expansion of the organization to include a credit union, funeral and travel services and a public housing project. After her death in 1995, the City of Berkeley named a housing project the Erna P. Harris Court in her honor.