Jean L. Harris

She served as Chief of the United States Bureau of Resources Development, a consultant to the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the United States Agency on International Development and to the Congress during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.. Harris served as Vice President and health lobbyist for Control Data Corporation in Minnesota. The first African-American candidate for statewide office in Minnesota, Dr. Harris ran in the Republican primary for Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota in 2000.

Harris became the first female and first African-American mayor of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, serving from 1996 to 2001. She was a member of the United States Conference of Mayors.

The National Governors’ Association recognized her work on the federal and state level by honoring her with the association’s distinguished service award in 1981.

Harris became the first African American cabinet member in the Commonwealth of Virginia when Governor John Dalton appointed her Secretary of Human Resources in 1978.

Harris spent three years as an intern and resident at MCV before completing her post-graduate training at the University of Rochester. She served on the School of Medicine faculty during the 1970s. Harris held academic positions at Howard University and Johns Hopkins University, served as executive director of the National Medical Association Foundation, and the first full-time African-American faculty member at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia.

A member of the Class of 1955, Harris graduated in the top five of her class. Ebony Magazine featured Dr. Harris on its July 1955 magazine cover.

Harris graduated with honors from Virginia Union University in 1951.

Harris attended Armstrong High School, graduating in 1947. Douglas Wilder, the first African-American governor in the Virginia and the United States, was Dr. Harris' neighbor and classmate at Armstrong High School and Virginia Union University.

Jean Louise Harris (November 24, 1931 – December 14, 2001) was an American physician and politician. The first black woman to graduate from the Medical College of Virginia, she went on to serve on the faculty there before being appointed Virginia Secretary of Human Resources by Governor John N. Dalton. Harris moved to Minnesota, where she ran in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor in 1990 and eventually for mayor of Eden Prairie. She was mayor until her death from lung cancer in 2001.

Jean Harris was the daughter of Mrs. Jean L. Pace-Harris and Dr. Vernon Harris Sr. (April 30, 1897 - June 18, 1965), a prominent Meharry Medical College graduate and African-American physician in Richmond, Virginia. An Episcopalian, Harris was the oldest of her mother's two children; Dr. Harris's younger sister, Dr. Diane Harris Marsh (1936-2020), was a well-known dentist and the wife of Henry L. Marsh, famed Civil Rights attorney, long-time Virginia state senator, and Richmond's first African-American mayor. Dr. Harris's older brother, Vernon Harris Jr (May 18, 1926), was born from Vernon Sr.'s marriage to Beatrice Virginia Robinson Harris (1908–1928), who died at the age of 20 years.