LaShawn Harris

LaShawn Harris is an awarding winning historian and former Managing and Book Review Editor for the Journal of African American History (JAAH). Harris’s scholarly essays have appeared in Journal of Social History, Journal of Urban 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 was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2016. In 2017, Sex Worker, Psychics, and Numbers Runners won the Organization of American Historians (OAH) Darlene Clark Hine award (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).

In 2025, Harris published Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & The Police Killing that Galvanized New York City (Beacon Press).Tell Her Story received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was a 2026 finalist for several book prizes including the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH) and Association of American Publishers (PROSE award). Tell Her Story was featured on several scholarly, educational, and popular media lists: Ebony Magazine’s must-read list for August 2025, African American Intellectual Historical Society’s “the Best Black History Books of 2025,” Brooklyn Public Library’s Favorite Books for 2025, Library Journal’s 2026 National Black History Month List, and Ms. Magazine’s “August 2025 Reads for the Rest of Us.”

Harris is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and her work has been featured in popular media outlets including TV-One, Glamour Magazine, Huffington Post, Elle, Vice, Newsy, and The History Channel. Follow her on IG: @bronxhistorian08