There, in 1923, he began his career at the F. W. Woolworth Company store as an assistant stock room manager.

He continued working at Woolworth's after school and at night during his five and a half years at Trinity College, now Duke University, from which he graduated in 1928 with a major in accounting and business law.

[1] On February 1, 1960, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. (later known as Jibreel Khazan), and David Richmond, four young African-American students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), entered the downtown Greensboro Woolworth's (now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum) and sat at the "whites only" lunch counter.

Although a Woolworth's waitress told them "we don't serve Negroes here," the four students refused to leave their seats for the rest of the day.

[2] On Monday, July 25, 1960, after nearly $200,000 (~$1.58 million in 2023) in losses due to the demonstrations, store manager Harris quietly integrated the lunch counter when he asked 3 black employees of the store to change out of work clothes into street clothes and order a meal at the counter.