Melvin Harris Jr. was a union representative, community leader and a former aide to Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano. As a young man, he started a youth group for the purpose of steering his peers away from the drug gangs in southeast Queens. He continued this work in his adult years working with such community leaders as the late Dr. Charles Mixon, pastor of the Maranatha Baptist Church of Queens Village, and other clergy to oppose the widespread drug violence and crack dealing on the streets of his community. To accomplish this, he helped unite the civics and clergy in the group “Concerned Citizens Against Drugs” in collaboration with Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward. Harris was also very active in the Jamaica Branch of the NAACP in its fight for better schools, safer streets and concerned candidates for elected office. He organized a group of ardent social justice supporters, “People United Against Brutality,” which opposed the systematic stopping and searching by the police of innocent schoolchildren and pedestrians. In 1987, Harris joined Local 1056 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represented the public bus drivers in Queens. He became the Local’s political director and the union representative for the Queens Depot. As such, he not only attended and participated in civic-sponsored meetings on improving public transportation in southeast Queens but had a significant role in the preparation of a union contract that had national implications because of its trail-blazing benefits. Harris later moved to Uniondale in Nassau County, where he served as a public liaison for the County Executive and was appointed Commissioner of the Nassau County Human Rights Commission. He was also the president of the Hempstead chapter of the NAACP from 2012 to 2014. In 2019, Harris was honored with the designation of a portion of Front Street in Uniondale as Melvin Harris Jr. Way.