Ani and the Harrisburg Independent Press: A memoir
—When 23-year-old Ani moves in with her boyfriend in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, she has no idea that she’ll soon be involved with an underground newspaper or a major political trial– or that she will be evacuated from her home during a devastating flood.
But that’s what happened some 50 years ago, just before Watergate, and it’s how national journalist Anita M. Harris began her career.
Harris writes about those experiences in a new memoir called “The View from Third Street: Ani and the Harrisburg Independent Press.”
Named for the Harrisburg street on which the newspaper, HIP, was housed, The View from Third Street highlights the challenges faced by a young woman at a time of tumult– when civil rights, feminism, and anti-Vietnam war activism clashed with the status quo.
The book was published by Cambridge Common Press in June, 2022, in conjunction with Harrisburg’s commemoration of Hurricane Agnes and the 1972 flood.
The View from Third Street, which includes rarely seen photos and cartoons from the early 1970s, braids together stories of:
- Ani’s adventures covering Harrisburg for HIP
- The iconic Trial of the Harrisburg 7, in which a group of nuns and priests stood accused of conspiring to kidnap Presidential Advisor Henry Kissinger and blow up underground heating tunnels in Washington, DC.
- The devastating flood of 1972, caused by Hurricane Agnes, which left 122 people dead.
“I wrote The View from Third Street to show how individuals impact and are impacted by clashing forces of history,” Harris says. “I hope the book will provide support and inspiration for a renewed quest for peace and freedom, today.”
After her experiences in Harrisburg, author Anita M. Harris went on to report for Newsday, WRFM Radio, and MacNeil Lehrer (now the NewsHour) of PBS. She has taught journalism at Harvard, Yale and Simmons Universities, and is the author of two non-fiction books: Broken Patterns: Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity and Ithaca Diaries. She is currently managing director of the Harris Communications Group, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Harris notes with humor that the building that once housed HIP is now an ice cream shop called “Urban Churn.” And that she is not related to Harrisburg’s 18th century founder, John Harris.