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Kamala Harris Becomes First Black and First HBCU Grad to be Vice President of the USA
11/02/2021•5 minute read
Black history month is a pivotal time to look back on our past as a country and celebrate the accomplishments of Black activists, change-makers, and innovators. It’s also an important time to look at the present and future of our nation. On August 11th, President Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate in the 2020 election.
Our country’s first female, first Black Vice President. Vice President Harris is also the first Indian-American and first-person of Asian-American descent to be sworn in as the Vice President of the United States of America. She is also the first graduate of an HBCU, or a historically Black college/university to become Vice President.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ Roots
Harris, born in Oakland, California, is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian Immigrants but defines herself simply as American. She has lived through times of change and transition in a very acute way. Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was captivated and involved in the civil rights movement and African-American culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Her mother initially marched and protested with her Black husband, but then after their divorce, continued to march with her two daughters, of course, including VP Kamala Harris. Harris directly experienced shifts in our country as she was bused to an elementary school in a wealthier neighborhood with other Black students during the time of school integration.
From a young age, Kamala Harris had a “stroller-eye view” of the civil rights movement. “My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters… She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women," said Harris in her recently published autobiography, The Truths We Hold.
The First HBCU Graduate to hold office in the White House
After high school, Harris attended Howard University in Washington, D.C While Harris had roots at UC Berkeley through her parents’ education, Harris chose Howard, an HBCU.
Harris’s choice to attend Howard University was fueled by the fact that she wanted to become a lawyer and attend a school that would provide a different experience, one where she was surrounded by like-minded students. One was that they were empowered to speak up. VP Harris was a social activist the moment she arrived on campus, protesting apartheid in South Africa and participating in a sit-in to protest the wrongful expulsion of a newspaper’s editor.
“That was the beauty of Howard. Every signal told students that we could be anything — that we were young, gifted, and black, and we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our success.” To narrow down her choices, she discovered that her hero, supreme court justice, and profoundly impactful lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, attended the school.
At Howard, she studied political science and economics before she matriculated to the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco where she earned her Law degree.
Vice President Harris paves the way as the first person to graduate from an HBCU to hold office in the White House.
“It's a pivotal moment in the evolution of HBCUs when one of our own is finally breaking through the barriers that exist," said Grambling State University President Rick Gallot.
In her acceptance speech, she shouted out HBCUs and "Family is my beloved Alpha Kappa Alpha, our Divine Nine, and my HBCU brothers and sisters," Harris said. The Divine Nine is a nickname for America’s historically black sororities and fraternities. For more information on HBCUs, read on here.
A Personal History of Firsts
The Vice-Presidential election was not Harris’s ‘first first’ by any means. In 2010, she was elected as the first African-American and the first woman as California’s Attorney General. Harris spent seven years as the San Francisco District Attorney and then six years as California’s Attorney General before she was elected to the Senate in 2016. In the Senate, she served on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, earning her stripes as a force ready to take on an even greater challenge and leadership role in the United States. She launched her presidential campaign in 2019, and while she didn’t win the primary for the Democratic party, she was chosen as President Joe Biden’s running mate.
On November 7th, 2020, Kamala delivered her acceptance speech, speaking to the incredible work women have done, currently do, and will continue to do in the United States. “When [my mother] came here from India at the age of 19, maybe she didn’t quite imagine this moment. But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible. So, I’m thinking about her and about the generations of women — Black Women, Asian, White, Latina, and Native American women throughout our nation’s history who have paved the way for this moment tonight. Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality, liberty, and justice for all, including the Black women, who are too often overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy...But while I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”
At a poignant time in our history with racism and division unfortunately extremely present, we are beyond excited to congratulate the country on electing the first female, first black, first Indian-American, Vice President of the United States. While there is so much work still to be done, this is an incredibly powerful first step and historical moment for our nation and every citizen.
