A multimedia company created to encourage, inspire and empower Black girls to embrace who they are in a world where they are invisible.
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About
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Bettinita Harris
Bettinita Harris' award-winning journalism career spanned more than 20 years at some of the nation's most prestigious newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, The Tampa Tribune and The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal.
The hallmark of her work as a reporter and editor has been the rare ability to capture the souls of her subjects and share this intimate insight with the world. She is now focusing her passion for truth-telling on the world of children's literature.
The mission of her multimedia company Colored Girl Wisdom, LLC. (www.coloredgirlwisdom.com) is to create an ongoing series of children's books that provide life lessons to guide African-American girls to develop a strong self-image.
The first book in the Sisters for Life, Best Friends Forever series, “Aria's Crown,” was published in 2018. The series includes “I am Aria,” “Aria's Rockin' Poufs,” “Because That’s the Way Divas Do It!!” and “Somebody Strikes Again!” The seeds for the series were sown in Harris’ journalism career through stories that gave voice to heart-rending tales of suffering and struggle.
She documented in The Tampa Tribune the tragedy of the Ray family, whose three young sons were diagnosed with HIV through blood transfusions to treat their hemophilia.
They were expelled from their Florida public school due to hysteria over their condition. After a federal court ruling returned the boys to school, their home was destroyed in an arson a week later.
The family's story became front-page news across the country. Their resulting activism in educating the public and dispelling myths about AIDS is considered a seminal event in the history of the disease and its repercussions in America.
Harris’ work as an editor includes guiding reporters on numerous stories that upended the status quo, exposed institutional wrongdoing or spotlighted the forgotten among us.
She also was lead editor for “I Am A Man,” a pictorial history chronicling Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s involvement in the Memphis sanitation workers strike that precipitated his 1968 assassination. She worked with numerous leaders of the civil rights movement to collect their remembrances of the event and preserve a watershed moment of U.S. history.
Harris, who lives in West Chester, Pa., shares her inspirational message of encouragement and empowerment to elementary-age students by visiting schools throughout the Philadelphia, Pa., region. She is married and has two adult children and three granddaughters.
