Four in One

Patricia Roberts Harris smiled as she said: "When I'm around, you get two for the price of one--a woman and a Negro." She hesitated, then continued: "No, you get four--a woman, a Negro, a lawyer and a teacher." That was just after President Johnson had nominated her as the next U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg. Upon Senate confirmation, Mrs. Harris, 40, will become the first Negro woman to head an American embassy.

As Ambassador to Luxembourg, Mrs. Harris will be the top U.S. diplomatic representative in a 999-square-mile grand duchy. The job is generally considered a protocol post, rarely if ever held by foreign-service careerists (one of Mrs. Harris' predecessors was Perle Mesta). But in the U.S. scheme of things it is a public honor, and one for which Patricia Harris has qualified.

A railroad waiter's daughter from Mattoon, III., she had a choice of five college scholarships and won a summa cum laude diploma from Howard University in Washington. She is an associate professor at Howard, has been admitted to Supreme Court practice, is active in civil rights organizations and Democratic politics, and last August delivered one of Johnson's seconding speeches in Atlantic City.

Her appointment, she said, will show "the possibility of achievement for people who don't start out as part of the establishment." She plans to take a State Department French course and to buy a new wardrobe. "I buy my clothes to wear forever, and most of them look as though I have done just that," she said, although she impressed reporters as being well turned out. Her husband, William Beasley Harris, 50, will close his Washington law office to accompany his wife on her first trip to Europe, diplomatic or otherwise.

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