Harris attended Columbia University, where she graduated in 1988 with a BA degree, majoring in American history and minoring in literature.
[1] Beginning in 2003, Harris was also affiliated with the department of African American Studies at Emory, where she served as the chair for multiple years.
[6] She particularly focuses on the city's Black voluntary associations, which began as informal networks organized around purposes like mutual aid and mechanical or literary instruction, and evolved into formal institutions that helped structure the lives of African American residents of the city.
[9] This conference was the originator of several pieces in a book that Harris co-edited with James T. Campbell and Alfred L. Brophy, called Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies and published in 2019.
[15] Harris has written that although she argued that evidence was insufficient to conclude "that the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America," the project was overall a "much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past."
She has also stated that by ignoring her advice, editors opened the door for critics to "use the overstated claims to discredit the entire undertaking".