Kamala Harris became the black and Asian Americanand the first woman, and the first, to be vice-president-elect, with a very hearty laugh.
In a video posted to her social media Kamala Harris shares the news with President-elect Joe Biden: “We did it, we did it, Joe, you are going to be the next president of the United States!”
Her words were about him but the history of the moment is hers.
She launched a potent attack on Joe Biden over race during a debate, just over a year ago, as the senator from California hoping to win the Democratic nomination for presidency. Many thought it imposed a serious blow on his ambitions. But her campaign was deadby the end of the year and it was Mr. Biden who remitted the 56-year-old to the national spotlight by putting her on his ticket.
What she has revealed from the moment she took the national stage with her pitch for the presidency – is grit.
More of Kamala Harris
She was born in Oakland, California, to 2 immigrant parents. Her mother is an Indian-born and father is a Jamaican-born.When she was five, her parents divorced and she was primarily raised by her Hindu single mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a civil rights activistand cancer researcher.
Also joining her mother on visits to India, she grew up engaged with her Indian heritage. ButMs. Harris has said that her mother adopted Oakland’s black culture, immersing her 2 daughters – Kamala and her younger sister Maya – within it.
Her upbringingand biracial roots mean she personifies and can engage with and appeal to many American identities. Those parts of the country which have seen fast demographic change, enough change to alter a region’s politics, see an aspirational symbol in her.
But it was her time at Howard University, one of the nation’s leading historically black colleges and universities, which she has described as among the most growing experiences of her life.
In the 1980s,Lita Rosario-Richardson met Kamala Harris while at Howard when students would gather in the Yard area of the campus to hang out and discuss politics, fashion and gossip.
They bonded over a talent for energetic debate with campus Republicans, their experience growing up with single mothers, even just both being the Libra star sign. It was a growing era politically too.