Trudier Harris (born February 1948) is an American literary scholar, author, and Professor Emerita at the University of Alabama. She was the J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Biography
Harris was born in February 1948 in Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. She was the sixth of seven children born to Terrell Harris Sr. and Unareed Harris (née Burton). Her early years were spent on an 80-acre cotton farm in Greene County, Alabama. Her father was a successful farmer but still combated the prejudices of the day, jailed for one year after being accused of stealing a bale of cotton. She participated in canning vegetables and killing hogs on the farm. Her father succumbed to a heart attack in 1954 when she was six years old. After her father's death, members of the Harris family suggested Unareed separate the children and turn custody over to extended family members. Her mother refused, sold the cotton farm, and moved everyone to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. To support her family, she worked as a domestic for white families, then later as a janitor and cook at an elementary school.
Harris attended the all-black Druid High School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She worked her way through Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, graduating in 1969 with a B.A., magna cum laude, in English and a minor in social studies. Active on campus, she became president of her sorority, Zeta Phi Beta. As a student worker, she was an assistant to John Rice (Condoleezza Rice's father) when he was a dean at Stillman College. Harris attended Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where she received her master's (1972) and doctoral degrees (1973) in English.
In 1973, Harris graduated from Ohio State University. Harris was the first African American to be hired in a tenure-track position at College of William & Mary and earn tenure there, before taking a position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in 1979. In 2004 she was awarded the Eugene Current-Garcia Award, an honor given each year to an outstanding Southern literary scholar.
In 2018, College of William and Mary awarded her an honorary degree.