Harris was appointed to the cabinet of President Jimmy Carter as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) when Carter took office in 1977. At her confirmation hearing, Senator William Proxmire questioned whether Harris came from a background of too much wealth and power to be an effective H.U.D. Secretary. She responded: "I am a black woman, the daughter of a Pullman (railroad) car waiter. I am a black woman who even eight years ago could not buy a house in parts of the District of Columbia. I didn't start out as a member of a prestigious law firm, but as a woman who needed a scholarship to go to school. If you think I have forgotten that, you are wrong." Otherwise, her confirmation went smoothly. Once confirmed, Harris became the first African American woman to enter the Presidential line of succession, being 13th in line for the Presidency. She served as HUD Secretary from 1977 to 1979, reorganizing the department and shifting from knocking down slums to rehabilitating the neighborhoods through millions of dollars of funding and her Neighborhood Strategy Program for rebuilding, Urban Development Action Grants for luring businesses back into cities, and an expanded Urban Homesteading Plan. "The Washington Post", looking back at her reforms several years later, noted: "fter two years as secretary, the agency had changed from a mere extension of the nation's housing industry to an advocate for saving inner cities."