For Norman Harris, learning was an experience that involved the mind, body and soul. And teaching black and African studies courses consisted of more than reciting historical facts for students to memorize.
He saw ways to get in touch with a person’s hidden talents and abilities.
“He had a way of encouraging people to dig deep and get in touch with their spirits and their intellect,” said Clarissa Myrick-Harris, his wife of almost 25 years. “It was so they could do things they didn’t know they could do.”
Harris, of Atlanta, who had recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer, died Oct. 19 from cardiac complications following surgery. He was 61. A funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at Alfonso Dawson Mortuary, which is also in charge of arrangements. Burial will follow at Lincoln Cemetery.
At the time of his death, Harris was employed by Fielding Graduate University, an on-line graduate school. He’d recently revamped the school’s doctoral program, said friend and colleague Lenneal Henderson, of Baltimore.
An educator for more than 30 years, Harris found happiness in helping his students reach higher and higher heights, especially people of color, friends and colleagues said.
“He was very creative and had an immense imagination,” said Henderson, who is on faculty at Fielding and is a distinguished professor in the school of public and international affairs at the University of Baltimore. “He told one of the doctoral students he was mentoring that it was OK to use 100 percent of her imagination when looking for a solution to a problem.”
But it was more than just using one’s imagination, said Joyce King, a professor of social foundations of education at Georgia State University. It was first about “recovering our confidence in ourselves as African people with originality and imagination that comes from our own experience. That is a way of teaching that allows students of any background to experience maximum growth and productivity.”
Born in Grenada, Miss., Harris graduated from high school in Gary, Ind. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Indiana University in 1973 and a master’s degree in political science from Atlanta University in 1975. Just before earning a doctorate degree from Indiana University in 1975, while living in Atlanta, Harris experienced a period of “heighten black consciousness,” his wife wrote in a tribute to her husband. After he finished his studies, he took a job in Detroit at Wayne State University as an English professor and worked on developing software focused on mainstreaming African American-authored literature in high schools. For the rest of his career, no matter where he taught, including the University of Georgia, Clark Atlanta University and the APEX Museum, he sought out ways to diversify the curriculum and the faculty.
“He was confident that we could solve the problems confronting us today by drawing on our culture and great knowledge traditions,” King said.
In addition to his wife, survivors include daughters, Amina Harris and Ayana Harris, both of Atlanta; and sisters Bobbie Jean Hall, Evelyn Rucker and the Rev. Gwendolyn Sanders, all of Gary, Ind.
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