Throughout his career, Harris actively promoted racial reconciliation as well as African-American education, suffrage, and equality. He regularly denounced racism among southern whites, condemned lynching, and highlighted the importance of higher education for African Americans, frequently citing the work of W.E.B. Du Bois in his editorials. In 1883, for example, the "New York Sun" had an editorial: "educating the negro will merely increase his capacity for evil." "The Atlanta Constitution" editorial countered with: if "education of the negro is not the chief solution of the problem that confronts the white people of the South then there is no other conceivable solution and there is nothing ahead but political chaos and demoralization."