Julian La Rose Harris was born on June 21, 1874 in Savannah, Georgia, United States. He was the son of Joel Chandler Harris, a journalist and author, and Esther La Rose. He spent his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia, where his father worked on the Atlanta Constitution.
Harris' formal schooling was limited to the West End Academy and one year at the Gordon Military Institute in Atlanta (1889-1890). In 1890-1891 he attended Frères Maristes Academy in St. Éphrem d'Upton, Quebec, to study French.
From an early age Harris saw himself as a crusader for human rights. Harris early decided on journalism as a career. At the age of eighteen he joined the Atlanta Constitution as a reporter. Desiring experience with a larger metropolitan daily, he spent a six-month leave of absence in 1896 with the Chicago-Times Herald, where he was assistant to the Sunday editor. Back to the Constitution in the fall of 1896, he rose through the ranks and became managing editor in 1900, a position he held four years.
In 1904-1905, Harris served as news editor of the Atlanta Daily News, a short and unrewarding association for him. He and his father launched a new southern-based periodical, Uncle Remus's the Home Magazine, which first appeared in June 1907. The publication was intended as a mouthpiece for Joel Chandler Harris' ideas about sectional and racial reconciliation in order to bring the South into the mainstream of twentieth-century American life. When his father died suddenly in July 1908, Harris assumed the position of editor and general manager. Uncle Remus' was only modestly successful. It attracted few superior writers and remained largely an innocuous organ for middle-class consumption, rarely addressing itself to the original goals of Joel Chandler Harris. Financial problems led to its demise in 1913.
Harris spent the World War I years in France as editor of the New York Herald Paris edition. With the United States' entrance into the war, Harris served as a commanding first lieutenant (1917) and a captain of the military intelligence division of the army (1918). He returned to the Herald as assistant managing editor in January 1919, rising to chief European correspondent in April 1919 and to general manager the following January. In 1920 Harris achieved a lifelong ambition of buying into a newspaper of his own, the Columbus Enquirer-Sun.
By 1922 he was sole owner and editor. Each controversial crusade brought a temporary loss of readers and advertisers. The business side of the paper was run carelessly, and in 1929 Harris had to sell it. Shortly thereafter he resigned because the new owner, J. M. Stein, interfered with editorial policy.
Harris returned to the Atlanta Constitution in 1930, where he spent five years as news director, advertising director, and book review editor. His last major position was as executive editor of the Chattanooga Times from 1935 to 1942. This was largely an administrative position. Upon his retirement from the Chattanooga Times in 1942, he became a southern correspondent for the New York Times, a part-time position that he held for three years. A long retirement followed in Atlanta, where he died.
Julian Collier Harris went down in history as a prominent journalist and publisher of the Columbus Enquirer Sun. His paper fearlessly battled the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia, attacked lynching and advocated justice for black people, supported the teaching of evolution, worked for more efficient and responsive state and local government, urged greater support for Georgia's public schools, and supported free speech and civil liberties. The Enquirer Sun brought news of the best books, music, and art to its somewhat provincial Columbus readers. In 1926 the Enquirer-Sun was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service.
In the 1912 presidential campaign Harris supported the Progressive party of Theodore Roosevelt, long a friend of the Harris family. Harris was one of Roosevelt's few important southern backers.
Harris believed in sectional reconciliation, racial tolerance, and decency toward others.
On October 26, 1897, Harris married Julia Florida Collier, the daughter of a prominent Atlanta family. She became his professional associate as well as a writer and journalist in her own right. They had two sons, both of whom died in childhood.
