Myra Ann Harris grew up in a household that valued education, so it was no surprise when she decided to attend Towson University, originally founded as a teacher’s training college.

Education was “something that just came natural” to her, said her niece, Angela Harris. She wasn’t focused on the fact that she would be one of the first Black students pursuing a four-year degree at Towson when she enrolled there. She just wanted to learn and to teach.

Harris, the namesake of a Towson residence hall who had an illustrious career in Baltimore schools, died Feb. 1 after a brief illness. She was 87.

“Everything that she was in, she did it to the end,” Angela Harris said. “She was really immersed in what she was doing, from being a teacher to being the principal and the little other things that she did in the community. She just was focused on whatever task she had.”

She was born in Baltimore on Dec. 9, 1937, to Elmira and John Harris. She had two brothers, Carl and Wilfrid, and was raised a Roman Catholic. She was baptized at St. Pius V Catholic Church, and religion continued to be a major part of her life as she grew older.

She attended Baltimore schools and graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1955. She was accepted to Coppin State University but decided to attend what was then Towson State College after a representative from the college reached out and asked her to take a placement test, Angela Harris said.

Efforts to integrate Maryland schools had just begun when Myra Harris and her classmate, Marvis Barnes, stepped foot on the Towson campus. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, had come down a year before.

But discrimination was still prevalent and commonplace, and many parts of the institution were still separate, said Dr. Patricia Bradley, Towson University’s vice president for inclusion and institutional equity. Myra Harris once recounted to Bradley that she and Barnes had an entire residence hall floor to themselves because white students didn’t want to share the common bathroom with them.

“To think that was someone that we knew in our lifetime that experienced that, and then even though she endured all of that, she went on to graduate from Towson, went on to Columbia University,” Bradley said. “She did a lot of great things.”

Harris and Barnes became the first two Black graduates of Towson University in 1959. Harris went on to earn a master’s degree from Columbia and took postgraduate classes at Johns Hopkins and Loyola universities.

Her dream of becoming an educator was finally realized, Angela Harris said. Many of her family members had been teachers, and Myra Harris followed in their footsteps. Early in her career, she taught elementary school and supervised student teachers. Later, she served as assistant principal at Harlem Park and Madison Square elementary schools, retiring in 1992.

The next year, members of Granting Opportunity for Learning and Development (G.O.L.D.) established the Barnes-Harris endowment at Towson. The fund provides scholarships to incoming freshmen who demonstrate financial need.

The recipients of the scholarship will always remember who Harris and Barnes were, and a little research helps them understand the impact both students had on the university, Bradley said.

“The role that she played at Towson University in the 1950s is just inspiring,” she said.

In 2022, the university further honored Harris and Barnes by naming two residence halls after them. At the dedication ceremony that year, Harris said she never “dreamed that this would happen to me.”

“As one of the first trailblazers, I wish much happiness and success to the students who are following my footsteps today,” she said, according to Towson University.

If there’s one lesson to take away from Harris’ life story, it’s that “anyone, even someone of modest means, can pursue their education,” Bradley said.

“They can pursue their education at Towson, where they can feel a sense of belonging, where they can do something for the public good,” she said. “They can achieve their goals, achieve their education, and take that education to serve their community.”

Indeed, outside of her work, Harris was deeply involved in her community. She served as an officer for the neighborhood Upton Planning Committee and the Northwest United Protection Association, and she was a familiar face at Bingo World in Brooklyn. She was very active in her church and served on various committees there, family said.

Harris also enjoyed traveling with friends and family. She visited Italy, Russia, Japan and several countries in Africa. In the states, she sponsored trips to Atlantic City, Delaware Park and Midway casinos, according to her official obituary. She cared deeply for her family members and served as a caretaker for her mother and aunt until their deaths in the 1990s.

“She should just be remembered as someone with resilience, someone who cared about community, who cared about family, who valued education,” Bradley said. “Many people, they excel and succeed in life, and they don’t really keep those skills locally in their hometowns. But I think it’s very important to know that she traveled abroad, she went to many different countries, but she always came back home.”

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