Born into a world of legal segregation, Greg Harris has pushed to overcome; today at age 73, he is the new U.S. Attorney for the Central District of Illinois.
Harris, who was recently appointed to the job by President Joe Biden, is the first African American to hold the post that oversees federal law enforcement in the 46-county district that stretches from Indiana to Iowa.
He grew up in Washington, D.C., where his father was a U.S. Army officer and his mother a public-school teacher.
“My mother, who was an educator, told me and my brother, ‘You guys are going to be professionals. You have to be either a doctor or a lawyer.’ I hated blood. So, I thought, hmm, maybe I’ll be a lawyer.”
His neighborhood in D.C. was Black and middle class. When D.C. schools integrated, Harris was sent to a predominantly white high school. But school administrators excluded him from college preparatory classes.
“I was placed on a track that was designed for you to become a clerical person, not a professional. And my mother fought against that. She knew that I wasn’t going to come out of high school with enough credits to go to a nice college.
“So, she met with the administrators and said, ‘You know, my son is going to go to college. And they were like, ‘No, he’s staying in that track.’ So, what my mother did, much to my chagrin, was say, ‘OK, he’ll stay in that track. But, in addition to those courses, he’s going to take college preparatory courses.’ So, I spent every summer in high school taking French and algebra and calculus and chemistry, in addition to those other general courses.”
While schools were officially segregated early in Harris’ life, they continued a pattern of unofficial segregation after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education. In the 1960s, the schools made a tepid move toward integration by having Black students from middle-class neighborhoods bused to predominantly white schools.
Greg’s brother, Rick, described their neighborhood this way, “Relative to the Black experience, we were certainly a middle-class family. Although I must say that amongst the families in our neighborhood, you could almost say lower middle-class.”
Rick describes his brother as a bit of a daredevil growing up. Greg had a Plymouth Road Runner and he liked to drag race, Rick recalled. While sometimes he raced at an official track in Maryland, he also liked to compete on a portion of the future D.C. Beltway in Maryland – before it opened to traffic.
“I sure hope they don’t hold that against him 50 years after the fact,” he said with a laugh. He added that Greg also enjoyed parachuting out of airplanes as a young man.
College-bound
Washington’s Howard University was considered the “Harvard of Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” Rick said.
However, Greg Harris said it wasn’t his first choice.
“I actually wanted to go to someplace like Georgetown or American or Catholic or George Washington (universities), someplace like that. Howard was my fallback school in case I didn’t get in. I applied to a number of schools. I didn’t get in. And so it was like, ‘Oh, OK, I’ll go to Howard.
“And it turned out to be a wonderful experience for me. Because I grew up in a middle-class Black family and we thought we were doing pretty well, I didn’t really appreciate the value in the historical significance of Howard University when I got around the campus. But there were a number of students who lived on campus, unlike me, because I lived at home. They were from the South, and they looked at Howard as Harvard. I mean, they took the educational experience that Howard offered very, very seriously.”
The 1960s were a turbulent time to be on just about any college campus and Howard University was no exception. Militant Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael was a visible presence on campus.
“Martin Luther King was assassinated in ’68. The place went up in flames,” Greg Harris recalled. “Black Panthers were on campus all the time. They shut down the school, once bringing a machine gun on campus, and closed the place down. The administration buildings would be occupied by students. … As all of these things were happening and I’m walking from one class to another class or going to the library or whatever, and I’m seeing these demonstrations and I’m seeing these articulate leaders … So, I credit Howard University with saving my life in the sense of really getting me involved with the community.”
During one summer in college, he worked as a copyboy at the Washington Post and met reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
“The Washington Post was a huge operation, and I was at Howard, and so this was a summer job. Great job. Katharine Graham was probably in leadership, but she wasn’t the publisher of the newspaper at the time. There was another guy who smoked a cigar (Ben Bradlee); he was the editor for a number of years. Anyway, I got to meet all those folks, not realizing the significance, of course, until years later when the story at Watergate broke.”
After graduating from Howard, Harris applied to law school at Georgetown University and was rejected.
“My neighbor, who was a judge in the local superior court, said, ‘I know you want to go to law school and that you’re going to spend a year or so working. Why don’t you come down to the courthouse and see what lawyers do?’ And I said, ‘OK.’ … He was the father of my best friend at that time. Talk about Black mentors, you know, he must have seen something in me that he wanted to develop. We had a very good relationship.
“He said, ‘Understand this, you’re going to start at the bottom. Just like anybody else. You’re not going to have any advantage in that regard.’ What he was saying is my job was as a bailiff in the courtroom. Opening up the court, I’d say, ‘All rise. The honorable judge so-and-so is here. Please be seated and come to order.’ And I’d be pouring water for the judges and carrying their robes. I did that before I became a courtroom clerk.”
His brother, Rick, said one prominent Black judge gave Greg a hard time.
“(Judge) Harry T. Alexander was quite a character. He was a wild cat. He admonished Greg for not wearing an Afro at a time when they were popular. He called him an ‘Uncle Tom.'”
When Harris completed clerking in Washington, he attended John Marshall Law School in Chicago.
“The fear (of failure) drove me,” said Harris, noting that his best grades during his whole academic career were in law school. “I had an aptitude for the stuff, too, but I think fear motivated me a great deal to excel in law school. … I started branching out to doing other things, like I started the Black American Law Student Association at John Marshall, and I was very proud of that. And I got elected as the president.”
He took the train to Springfield to interview for a job with the Illinois Appellate Defender’s Office.
“I was interviewed by a guy named Bruce Stratton. … You got to know he’s a colorful guy. He’s, very involved with the Republican Party. I’ve got my three-piece suit on and he’s wearing a pair of jeans, and he’s got his feet kicked up on the desk. I come in and the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘I hope you don’t think you’re impressing anybody by wearing that three-piece suit.’ And I was like, ‘This interview is not going to go too well.’
That was his humor. That’s his style. And then we talked about my interest in the office. I had also arranged to have an interview with the Macon County State’s Attorney’s Office the same day. I was going to take the bus from Springfield to Decatur after this interview. Stratton said, ‘Be sure you sit in the back of the bus when you go there.’ I’m not making this stuff up. And now Bruce and I are great friends. But back then, I had never met this guy before.”
Life after law school
Harris accepted the offer from the appellate defender’s office, which began a more than 40-year legal career in Springfield. He’s been an assistant U.S. Attorney for about 30 of those years. Harris also was a partner in the Springfield law firm Giffin, Winning, Cohen & Bodewes and served as chief legal counsel to two state agencies.
Harris met his wife, Hirut, while eating at The Pasta House. She was an Ethiopian immigrant and single mother working as a waitress at the restaurant. Hirut was living with her sister who was then a medical student at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.
Hirut’s father was a provincial governor in Ethiopia who was imprisoned after a coup.
“My parents lost all their resources. So, it was not a fun time for us. My brother was (in the United States). So, he invited me to come here,” she said.
Hirut had lived in Washington for seven years before moving to Springfield. She said the first time Greg asked her out on a date she said “no.”
“I’m here in school and I have a son, and this was not an ideal way for me to become involved in dating. But he insisted. I told him, ‘If you want a date, can you come back in six months when school was out in the summer?’ And he did.”
She said she was concerned about the cultural differences, but her sister and son liked him. After a period of friendship, the two began dating and within six months wed.
“Twenty-two years ago, we got married,” Greg Harris said. “I adopted her son and then we had two beautiful girls, and I was in my 50s when that happened. I was like, ‘You’re what?'”
Harris said that while he was married previously, he didn’t have any children when he met Hirut and “was terrified that I wasn’t going to be able to be a dad. But it was wonderful.”
His daughter, Maya, is now 20 and a junior at Illinois State University. His youngest daughter, Leah, is 19 and attending St. Louis Community College on a volleyball scholarship. Both girls graduated from Springfield High School.
His son, Fanuel “Ace,” lives in Washington D.C. and works for Swisslog Logistics programming robots.
Hirut said of her husband, “He’s so honest. I always tease him, ‘If you added compassion on that, you will be the best human being,’
“He loves his job and he loves his country. Government and country are the same to him. He doesn’t see politics. It is just the United States government. He thinks it is the best government ever created in the world. He’s very much a public servant. He doesn’t think of being a Democrat or Republican. His government is very, very important to him.”
Greg Harris said he is a deep admirer of the late U.S. Senator Paul Simon, D-Illinois. Sangamon County Democratic Party Chairman Bill Houlihan said of Harris, “He probably is a more moderate Democrat. He’s always been active in the party. … He worked on candidate recruitment and working with folks.”
Houlihan added Harris was active in the 1980s in working to change the Springfield form of government from commission to aldermanic.
Minorities in various cities objected to the commission form because commissioners were elected at-large, which often resulted in minority communities being underrepresented. The aldermanic form of government allows for the election of city council members from wards representing different parts of a city.
“Back then, all the commissioners were from right around Washington Park. So, there were a lot of parts of the city that were not represented,” Houlihan recalled.
Former U.S. Attorney Rodger Heaton, who held the post during George W. Bush’s time in office, said Greg Harris’ devotion to the job is clear.
“I wrote a letter of support for Greg’s appointment as U.S. Attorney before the president made the appointment,” he said. “In the letter, I said that I thought that Greg was a great option for the president. … Greg is a very thoughtful listener, including to people who express views that are different than his own. He has worked both as a defense attorney and as a prosecutor and understands both roles. And I think he believes in the importance and the value that both the defense side and the prosecution side bring so that justice is achieved. I also pointed out in the letter that he lives out his values in his family and his community.”
One way he has lived out those values is by founding and participating in a tennis academy on Springfield’s east side, Heaton noted.
“I don’t remember when I got involved in the Springfield Tennis Academy. But it was fairly early on, and I’ve known Greg for more than 30 years. I’d guess it was in the 1990s. … He was clearly the leader of the organization. The group basically serves children and youth in economically challenged parts of the Springfield community.
“They do it every summer. They have for many years, and I’ve always been impressed by Greg’s commitment to that program. … It grew to a point where there were really a lot of kids participating. When I first got involved, it was kids who probably would never even have been introduced to the sport of tennis. But he was finding rackets for families that didn’t have tennis rackets,” Heaton said.
Greg Harris took the oath of office in December and said addressing gun violence is one of his top priorities.
“A small number of people commit most of the crime in the community,” he said. “And if you can identify those individuals and try and persuade them to put the guns down or to not engage in violence or alternatively, if they don’t, incarcerate them, you can reduce the crime level. … We are in a period now nationally where crime is on the rise, and it’s not just crimes against community members, but it’s also violence against police officers. It’s domestic violence. And I think one of the reasons that we’re seeing such a rise in crime is because of the availability of illegal guns in the community.”
Heaton said he was confident in recommending Greg Harris for the position. “First of all, the skills that Greg has are good. I also think we’re at a point in our country’s history where there’s a lot of enhanced attention to ensuring that leaders come from all parts of our community. And I think it’s producing some really important benefits, especially in the criminal justice system where a disproportionate number of people who end up incarcerated are people of color. I wouldn’t have recommended that Greg be appointed solely, or even primarily, because he’s African American. (I did recommend him because) I think that he’s a person of integrity.”
Heaton also said Greg Harris brings things to the job that are hard to measure.
“He knows the U.S. Attorney’s office, its employees and the agencies that they work with. And he has personally conducted some of the difficult work of the office for many years with success. I can say he has treated everyone he has encountered with respect.”
Scott Reeder, a staff writer for Illinois Times, can be reached at sreeder@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Overcoming the odds.
