To support her family, she worked as a domestic for white families, then later as a janitor and cook at an elementary school. Unareed refused, sold the cotton farm, and moved everyone to Tuscaloosa. After Terrell Sr.’s death, members of the larger Harris family suggested that Unareed separate the children and turn custody over to extended family members. Her mother was the largest influence in Harris’s life. Her father died of a heart attack in 1954, when Harris was six years old. Harris recalls participating in canning vegetables and killing hogs on the farm. Her father was a successful farmer but still suffered under Alabama’s system of legal white supremacy he was jailed for one year after being accused of stealing a bale of cotton. Harris spent her early years on an 80-acre cotton farm in Greene County.

and Unareed Burton Moore Harris she had two older half-sisters from her mother’s previous marriage. She was the sixth of seven children born to Terrell Harris Sr. Harris was born in February 1948 in Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County.

Growing up as an African American female in the segregated South, Harris learned to overcome obstacles and appreciate the family and community values generated by such restrictions. Literary and cultural critic Trudier Harris (1948- ) has gained acclaim for her work on African American writers such as Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, but her primary field of research focuses on the complexities of southern African American identity and experience.

South of Tradition by Trudier Harris