Obiturary: Janette Hoston Harris

Janette Hoston Harris

1939-2018

With deep regret, the Roothbert Fund announces the passing, on Nov. 2, 2018, of Janette Hoston Harris, one of the first recipients of a grant from the Fund. Janette Patriciene Hoston was born in Monroe, Louisiana, on September 7, 1939, the daughter of Mr. Eulen and Mrs. Maude Hoston. Her father managed a shoe store, a real estate firm, and owned a TV repair shop, and her mother was a seamstress. On March 28, 1960, while a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge, she participated in a sit-in at the all-white lunch counter at the SH Kress department store to protest against the store’s discriminatory practice of serving blacks at a separate counter. For this act of civil disobedience she and five others were arrested and jailed. A total of sixteen students were also expelled from the university for this and other civil rights transgressions, and the governor prohibited them from attending another university in Louisiana.

The press reports caught the attention of Albert Roothbert, who dispatched Carl Solberg to Louisiana with orders to seek out the students and offer assistance in pursuing their education. Janette could not attend college in Louisiana, so in 1961 she matriculated at Central State College in Wilberforce, Ohio, with a grant of $300 from the Roothbert Fund. (Four other students who were expelled with her also received support from the Fund.) The following year, the Fund provided an additional grant of $200. Thus began a life-long association with the Fund.

She received additional grants from the Fund in 1971-75 while studying at Howard University for an M.A. and a Ph. D. in U. S. and African American history. In 1972 and 1974, Janette played a leading role in the Fund’s STAR (Seeds of Toni and Albert Roothbert) program whereby groups of Fellows and young people met to discuss education and youth.

From 1975 to 1988, Janette was a member of the Fund’s board of directors and was involved with interviewing candidates in the Washington, DC area. Upon retiring from the board in 1988, she was elected a Senior Fellow.

The struggle for racial equality was a major focus of her life. During her childhood, African Americans could register to vote in her state only under the condition that they pass a literacy test and recite the preamble of the United States Constitution without a single error. One of her first jobs was to teach members of her community the preamble to the Constitution. After her expulsion from Southern University, she was the plaintiff in Hoston vs. the State of Louisiana which went to the Louisiana State Supreme Court. This case was later consolidated into Garner vs. Louisiana that was argued before the U. S. Supreme Court, and won by future Justice Thurgood Marshall. Janette had the privilege of being at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous speech, “I Have a Dream.”

After graduating from Central State, Janette moved to Washington DC, which would be her home for the balance of her life. Her initial application to join the Peace Corps was denied due to her arrest record, but after she called the White House to complain she received an invitation to meet Attorney General Robert Kennedy at the Department of Justice. He cleared the way for her to work for the Peace Corps. Later she taught elementary school in the District. After earning her graduate degrees she was a member of the faculty of the University of the District of Columbia for 18 years. In 1988, she was appointed the historian of the District of Columbia, the first woman to hold this position.

In 2004, forty-four years after the sit-in, Southern University made amends by awarding honorary baccalaureate degrees to the sixteen students who had been expelled.

In 1962, she married Rudolph Harris, who survives her as do their son, Rylan, daughter, Junie, and granddaughter, Rylan’s daughter, Kennedy. To them the Fund extends its deepest sympathy.