LaShawn Harris
Associate Professor of History
LaShawn Harris's research engages with women, gender, sexuality; labor and the working class; urban history; and social and cultural change.
Get in touchBiography
LaShawn Harris is an Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University and Assistant Editor for the Journal of African American History. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Social History, Journal of Urban History, and the Journal of Women's History. Harris is also the author of the prize-winning Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy (University of Illinois Press, 2016). Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners won the ... Darlene Clark Hine Book Prize (Best Book in African American Women’s and Gender History) from the Organization of American Historians as well as the Philip Taft Book Award (Best Book in American Labor & Working-Class History) from The Labor and Working-Class History Association. The book explores the lives of African American women in New York City’s expansive informal economy by drawing on police and prison records, newspaper accounts, and period literature. More broadly, Dr. Harris’s research engages with women, gender, and sexuality; labor and the working class; urban history; and social and cultural change. She received a Ph.D. in history from Howard University in 2007.
Read MoreEducation
Howard University: Ph.D., History | 2007
Selected Press
How Harlem's 'Queen of Numbers' built a gambling empire and used her wealth to give back to the Black community
Insider | 2022-08-31
"To leave her home country, she had to be a dreamer, a risk-taker," LaShawn Harris, associate professor at Michigan State University and author of "Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy," told Insider. "St. Clair wanted more for herself, and her community."
This Woman Built a Formidable Gambling Empire in 1920s Harlem
History | 2022-05-09
“Numbers gambling enabled many African Americans to supplement low wages and [attain] economic security,” writes LaShawn Harris, a Michigan State University history professor and the author of Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy. “Some enjoyed the opportunity of attaining wealth and financial independence. With their winnings, blacks paid bills, bought radios and clothes, and even started their own numbers operations.”
