Abram Lincoln Harris, Jr., was the first African American Economist; he was born January 17, 1899 in Richmond, Virginia and died November 16, 1963 in Chicago, Illinois ("Abram Lincoln Harris Jr Facts", 2010). He was born thirty-six years after his name sake, President Abraham Lincoln, signed the Emancipation Proclamation that lead to the abolishment of slavery and thereby allowing Harris the freedom to pursue his endeavors as an economist ("Emancipation Proclamation: Primary Documents of American History (Virtual Programs & Services, Library of Congress)", 2017). Although he was the grandson of a slave, he grew up in a middle-class household where his father, Abram Lincoln Harris, Sr., was a butcher in a German American owned meat shop and his mother, Mary Lee Harris, worked as a teacher ("Harris, Abram Lincoln, Jr. (1899-1963) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed", 2017). Through the influence of his parents, he was able to learn German while his father worked in the meat shop and after high school he earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Virginia Union University in 1922. Two years later, he earned Masters of Arts degree in economics from the University of Pittsburgh ("Abram Lincoln Harris Jr Facts", …show more content…
His masters' thesis, "The Negro Laborer in Pittsburgh, " spearheaded his research of African American workers in the steel manufacturing and coal-mining industries and yielded two published articles in the Opportunity, a National Urban League's journal, on the problems that African American faced as