Harris Family
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The spirit of adventure brought Chandler’s earliest known African-American entrepreneur to Chandler. Nathan Johnson Harris married Eunice McMullen in Oklahoma, and they had one daughter, Alberta. He left Oklahoma and came to Arizona, and then went to California. He later returned to Arizona, worked in the mines around Ray, and came to Chandler around 1920. For many years, Harris worked as Dr. Chandler’s chauffer. Upon Harris’ retirement, Dr. Chandler gave Harris four parcels of land just southeast of town in the area that would become Southside.
In 1932, Harris salvaged the town’s decommissioned 100,000-gallon water tank and converted it into Harris Bar-B-Q, located on Saragosa Street. “…He always had a lot of customers. They came from all over. They came down to his little round building … When I was teaching at Winn School, I saw cars come in there, big cars filled with people from San Marcos Hotel,” former Mayor Coy Payne states. The café was open from 5 o’clock in the morning, when Harris fired up the barbecue pit, until midnight, and was a gathering place for locals. LaVon Woods, Harris’ great-granddaughter, recalls Tex Earnhardt’s father, Hal, ate lunch there every day. Wagons of Native Americans from the reservation south of town would line Saragosa Street as they waited in line with the rest of Harris’ patrons.
The counter sat eight people at a time. N.J. sold hamburgers, barbecued beef and barbecued pork for 50 cents, bottles of soda for 5 cents, and customers could buy a loaf of Holsum bread for 10 cents if local stores were already closed. In later years, his daughter Alberta added potato salad to the menu.
N.J. Harris was a renaissance man. He not only ran a business and cooked; he was a photographer, silversmith, fisherman, hunter and furniture-maker. In 1944, Harris sent a turquoise box to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for which he received a thank you letter. He built several pieces of furniture out of cactus ribs, including a chest and desk. He enjoyed going fishing at Roosevelt Lake, and went hunting with a variety of people, such as Sheriff John Hamilton.
On June 12, 1957, Harris passed away. The family kept ownership of the land and ran the café until the 1980s. LaVon recalls, “As a child, my great-grandfather would go hunting with friends. He would come back with birds, and I would have to pick the feathers off of the birds before cooking. Gramps would complete the cleaning and my grandmother (Alberta) would make the cornbread for the stuffing. He would chop the vegetables that went into the stuffing. This was a bonding time for us, with Gramps in the kitchen.”
Other photos of N.J. Harris are located HERE