Julia Collier Harris

Julia Florida Collier was born in Atlanta on November 11, 1875, to Susan Rawson Collier and Charles A. Collier, once Atlanta's mayor.[1] She graduated from Washington Seminary and then attended a finishing school.[1] She studied art at Cowles Art School in Boston[1] and planned to pursue it as a career.[2] The death of her mother in March 1897 forced her to abandon her art career plans and return home to care for her five[3] younger brothers and sisters.[2] Her father died in 1900 under what she considered suspicious circumstances[1] and left her legal guardianship of her brothers and sisters.[4]

She married Julian LaRose Harris[1] on October 26, 1897, in Atlanta.[5] The son of Joel Chandler Harris, Julian was a journalist who had started with the The Atlanta Constitution at age sixteen and later became their youngest managing editor.[1] The couple had two sons, each of whom died in childhood in 1903 and 1904.[2]

She began her own journalism career in 1911 at The Atlanta Constitution as well, writing on literary topics, the arts and club news.[2] She was also state editor for the Georgia Federation of Women's Clubs.[2]

Around this time her husband Julian was business manager for his father's Uncle Remus Magazine,[1] but his father died in 1908, and the magazine folded in 1913.[1] The couple moved to New York City, where Julian wrote for the New York Herald and Julia wrote for their Herald Syndicate under the pseudonym Constance Bine.[2] She wrote a series of features for the Herald from Paris,[2] and as a result she was one of only two women who were present at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.[6] She wrote for the syndicate from 1916 to 1920.[5]

Harris with Marcel-Lenoir circa 1917

While she was writing for Herald, she worked on two books. Her first was a translation of Romanian folk tales.[7][8]. Her second was the first biography of Joel Chandler Harris,[9] and that 1918 book[10] remains a primary resource for scholars of his work.[6] She was also later instrumental in establishing a collection of his papers at Emory University's Robert W. Woodruff Library.[6]

In 1920 the couple moved back to Georgia and pooled their money to purchase an interest in (and later, full ownership of) the Columbus newspaper Enquirer-Sun.[2] The newspaper broke ground by identifying politicians who were secretly members of the Ku Klux Klan and by publishing news of the black community.[8]

Harris wrote a series of articles that helped defeat anti-evolution bills in the Georgia General Assembly[8] in 1924 and 1925.[11] She identified herself as a theistic evolutionist.[12] Other topics she editorialized included campaigns against convict leasing and lynching.[8] Between 1922 and 1929 she wrote hundreds of editorials for the paper, many of which were reprinted in other newspapers.[11]

As a result of this work, the Columbus Enquirer-Sun won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.[2] It was the first Pulitzer Prize to be awarded to people from Georgia.[2] Julian accepted the honor for his wife and said of her, "She is not only vice president of the Enquirer Sun Company, but a fearless associate editor, unyielding in the face of injustice of any kind, and a constant inspiration."[8]

Harris, her husband, and Mildred Seydell were the only journalists from Georgia who reported in person from the Scopes Trial in 1925.[13] Harris' husband covered the daily progress of the trial, while she wrote in-depth pieces and editorials that explained evolution.[11] Her husband said that "Julia is the better writer."[11]

Their outspoken editorials made them many enemies in Columbus,[6] which caused advertising revenue to plummet.[11] This forced them to sell the newspaper in 1929.[8]

A good newspaper woman must continue to study as well as to observe, and must prepare herself continuously against every emergency. My own all-round equipment as a writer has enabled me to take advantage of almost every opportunity that has come my way.

— Julia Collier Harris, quoted in Concerning The Fourth Estate, 1942 [14]

Julian returned to The Atlanta Constitution, and Julia worked on her third book, a collection of her father-in-law's essays.[11][15] In 1935 her husband became the executive editor of the Chattanooga Times, and she wrote features, editorials, book reviews. and a weekly column for that paper.[11]

Poor health and bouts of depression forced her to retire in 1938, but she continued to mentor young journalists until her death.[8] In 1942 the Harrises returned to Atlanta, where Julian was a correspondent for The New York Times until he retired in 1945.[11]

Outside of her career, Harris was active in the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching and the League of Women Voters.[2] She was also a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution as well as the Georgia Federation of Women's Clubs, in which she held several offices.[5]

She spent her later years in a nursing home, where she continued to write.[6] She died in 1967 and was buried in the Rawson family vault at Atlanta's historic Oakland Cemetery.[1]

She has been posthumously inducted into three different Georgia halls of fame. In 1996 she was inducted into the Georgia Newspaper Hall of Fame.[6] In 1998 she was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement.[8] In 2019 she was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.[11]

Her papers are held at Smith College,[16] and her husband's papers are held at Emory University.[17]

• Ispirescu, Petre (1917). The Foundling Prince & Other Tales. Translated by Harris, Julia Collier; Ipcar, Rea. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. OCLC 560304297.
• Harris, Julia Collier (1918). The Life and Letters of Joel Chandler Harris. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin company. OCLC 1031594442.
• Harris, Julia Collier, ed. (1931). Joel Chandler Harris, Editor and Essayist. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. OCLC 272364.

• Julia Collier Harris at Find a Grave