Harris arrived at the University of California, Berkeley on a colonial Jamaican government scholarship in the fall of 1961.[35] Later in the fall of 1962, he spoke at a meeting of the Afro American Association—a students' group at Berkeley whose members would go on to establish the discipline of Black studies, propose the holiday of Kwanzaa, and help form the Black Panther Party.[35] After his talk, he met Shyamala Gopalan (1938–2009), a graduate student in nutrition and endocrinology from India at Cal Berkeley who was in the audience.[35] According to Harris, "We talked then, continued to talk at a subsequent meeting, and at another, and another."[35] In July 1963, he married Gopalan.[35]
