Born: 29 June 1908, United States
Died: 9 March 1995
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the Densho Encyclopedia, in line with the Creative Commons licensing. It was written by Greg Robinson.
Erna P. Harris (1908–95) was an African American columnist who defended Japanese Americans.
Early Life and Career
Erna Prather Harris was born in 1908 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, a small town near Oklahoma City. She grew up there, attending local segregated schools and joining St. Steven’s A.M.E. Church. After graduating from Douglass High School in Kingfisher, she enrolled at Wichita State University, graduating with a B.A. in journalism in 1936. While at Wichita State, she worked for the school’s newspaper, The Sunflower. She also wrote and recited poetry and performed in a play, titled “No Account David,” at a local school. In February 1937, she made a speech at another local school, titled “The Sharing of the Races in Forming the Cultural Background of Present-day America.”
Upon graduation from Wichita State, Harris decided to stay in Wichita and start her own weekly newspaper, The Kansas Journal (not to be confused with the better-known Kansas City Journal). It operated for some three years. During this time, she became a well-known community figure. In 1938, she was a delegate to the national assembly of the Y.W.C.A. In 1940, she presented a lecture at the Water Street Y.W.C.A. in Wichita on “Adjustment to the International and World Conditions.”
In 1939, following the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Harris ran an editorial opposing the military draft. She later claimed that because of backlash over the editorial, her newspaper failed. Whatever the case, she decided to pull up stakes, and moved to Los Angeles. By 1942, she was working as a reporter for the Los Angeles Tribune, an African American newspaper headed by a woman editor, Almena Davis. By mid-1942, Harris was writing a regular editorial column for the Tribune, “Reflections in a Crackd Mirror,” which was syndicated in other publications. Outside of her newspaper work, she presented on the radio show “The Bronze Hour” on radio station KGFJ and worked with the local branch of the pacifist group Fellowship of Reconciliation.
In Defense of Japanese Americans
During Spring 1942, the Los Angeles Tribune distinguished itself as one of the few West Coast newspapers to take an official stand against the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. Harris was outspoken in her opposition. She later recalled that she saw removal as a racist move that threatened the rights of all: “Ever since the evacuation of Americans of Japanese ancestry and Japanese along the Pacific Coast was proposed, I have pointed out that the issue was one of race and on that basis affected anyone who was physically distinguishable as ‘colored.'” She clearly saw opposition to discrimination against other minorities, including Jews, Mexican Americans and Asians, as allied with her own cause. She wrote in July 1942, “Today the need for taking the inclusion of other colored people seriously is obvious. American citizens of Japanese ancestry are herded into ‘protective custody’ [and] denied the right of free assembly, with even their mimeographed camp papers censored. The abrogation of the civil rights of nearly 115,000 people is not to be lightly dismissed by people who know what that means.” Harris was attacked for her defense of Japanese Americans by the popular syndicated columnist Westbrook Pegler, who deplored the writings of “E.P.H.” as “naïve,” but it seems not to have reduced her determination to speak out.
In late November 1943, even as reports of rioting among inmates at the government’s “segregation center” at Tule Lake brought on a wave of hysterical stories over “disloyal Japanese,” Harris expressed sympathy for Japanese Americans who had been victimized by the biased coverage of the Hearst press:
Eighteen months ago the evacuation of the Issei and Nisei was being called a matter of military necessity on threat of imminent invasion. In a few months it was called protective custody for their own safety—such cannibals are we, their erstwhile neighbors, alleged to be. But now, as the interests which have long wanted them eliminated from California in the hysteria of war-bred hatred dare to come out into the open, there comes the call for their permanent exclusion from California….If citizenship is to become a matter of racial or national predeterminism or of periodic authoritarian changes, who will be safe from the whims of the powerful?
In the months that followed, Harris devoted several more columns to defending Japanese Americans. In a January 3, 1944 column, for example, she expressed outrage over an anti-Nisei Christmas cartoon by Los Angeles Times cartoonist Ed Leffingwell. Harris snapped, “Friends, this is how Hitler made little Nazis: by reaching the children and youth through stories and pictures, he taught them to fear and hate certain groups.” Meanwhile, she made speeches against bigotry. In October 1944 she delivered an address at Pacific College, Newburg, Oregon. Labelling her talk “A Recipe Is Not Enough,” she told students that a good recipe, while nice in the kitchen, was not enough to guarantee satisfactory relations with people of different races—she mentioned problems concerning Hopi Indians, the Japanese, and Negroes in the United States.
In an article in late 1944 in a new multiracial magazine, Pacific Pathfinder, she scored John Sinclair, a California state official who had advocated official action to discourage Japanese Americans from returning to the Pacific Coast. In February 1946 Harris wrote a column in the Tribune to advise her readers to celebrate National Brotherhood Week by planning their own events, instead of waiting for whites to reach out. Harris also proposed inviting Japanese Americans, American Indians and other minority group organizations as cosponsors.
Later Life
During the postwar years, Harris was joined on the staff of the Tribune by a group of outstanding Nisei, including columnist Hisaye Yamamoto, editorial assistant Wakako Nakamura (later Yamauchi), Sports editor Chester Yamauchi, and columnist Yone U. Stafford. It is not clear how long Harris continued on the staff of the Tribune. She was still listed on the masthead in 1946, and her “Reflections in a Crackd Mirror” columns continued through 1947. By 1948, however, when Harris joined her Nisei colleagues in nonviolent protest at the Bimini Baths in Los Angeles, which segregated black and Asian swimmers, she was listed in the Tribune’s own coverage as a “former staffer.”
Indeed, Harris moved on to other work. In 1945 she joined the national staff of the Worker’s Defense League as assistant secretary, and wrote a series of guest columns that year for the Omaha Guide. In Spring 1946, she moved to Seattle, Washington, where she lived for eight months. It seems Harris may have returned to Seattle sometime later, as a March 1950 census form lists her as living there as the housemate and “partner” of Dorothy Fisk. (An April 1950 census return lists her as living in Los Angeles, but as a roomer in a private house and with no listed occupation—all which suggests that she was merely back on a temporary visit.)
Whatever the case, in 1952 Harris moved to Berkeley, California, where she operated a print shop and continued to be active in a number of peace and civil rights organizations. She was appointed to the National Board of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in 1956. In later life, she served on the board of directors of the Berkeley Co-op. After her death, Harris was honored by the naming of a public housing project in Berkeley, Erna P. Harris Court.