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Darlene Clark Hine Book Prize, (Best Book in African American Women’s and Gender History), Organization of American Historians

Philip Taft Book Award (Best Book in American Labor & Working-Class History), The Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) & Cornell University School of Industrial & Labor Relations

Beyond the Shooting: Eleanor Gray Bumpurs, Identity Erasure, and Family Activism against Police Violence

“Women and Girls in Jeopardy by His False Testimony”: Charles Dancy, Urban Policing, and Black Women in New York City during the 1920s

The “Commonwealth of Virginia vs. Virginia Christian”: Southern Black Women, Crime & Punishment in Progressive Era Virginia Get access Arrow

Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy (New Black Studies Series)

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.

Women, Gender, and Sexuality

Labor and the Working Class

Urban History

Social and Cultural Change

Michigan State University Profile

MSU Department of History Profile

How Harlem's 'Queen of Numbers' built a gambling empire and used her wealth to give back to the Black community

This Woman Built a Formidable Gambling Empire in 1920s Harlem

Associate Professor of History

LaShawn Harris is an associate professor of History at Michigan State University and assistant editor for the Journal of African American History (JAAH). Her area of expertise includes twentieth century African American and Black Women’s histories. Harris’s scholarly essays are published in The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Urban History, Journal of Women’s History, and SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. Her first monograph, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Number Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy, won the 2017 Organization of American Historians' (OAH) Darlene Clark Hine award for the best book in African American women's and gender history and the Philip Taft Labor Prize from The Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) and the Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) School at Cornell University. Harris’s work has been featured in popular media outlets, including TV-One, Glamour Magazine, Elle, Vice, and Black Perspectives. Harris’s current research project explores the socioeconomic and political lives of African American women in New York City during the 1980s.

LaShawn D. Harris - Sex Workers, Psychics and Numbers Runners

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