Something amazing happened on January 20, 2021. Something that was long overdue: A woman was sworn in as vice president of the United States of America for the first time in the country's entire history. And that woman is Kamala Harris, who also happens to be a woman of color. Kamala's victory is a victory for every woman and little girl in this country because she broke through the glass ceiling that has kept women from what, up until now, has been a very White House—pun very much intended—and a very male White House at that.
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When Kamala spoke about her momentous win, she spoke about it in the context of history. “I am thinking about the generations of women, Black women,” she said. “Asian, white, Latina, Native American women, who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight. Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all—including the Black women who are often, too often, overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy.”
Kamala becoming the first female vice president of the United States is momentous for us all—regardless of whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or neither—because representation matters. Representation at all levels matters. It is much easier to become what you can see than what you can't see. When little girls and little boys of this generation see a woman of color being elected to the second-highest office of the land, it means something, just like it means something that we have yet to have a female president of the United States.
In honor of Madam Vice President Harris, we want to share a bit of her history and how she got to where she is now. Don't let partisanship get in the way of appreciating what her win means. We don't all have to agree on politics to agree that her win is a big deal.
Kamala is a California gal.
She was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan. The name Kamala means lotus. The lotus flower is symbolic of purity, regeneration, and enlightenment in many cultures. Kamala is also an alternate name for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, which is why her mother chose it.
Both of her parents were immigrants.
Her cancer researcher mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. Her economist father, Donald Harris, was born in Jamaica. Shyamala and Donald met while they were both pursuing graduate degrees at UC Berkeley. The couple separated when Kamala was 5 years old. And Kamala and her sister, Maya, were raised by their mother. Kamala's mother died in 2009.
Her mother raised her to look for solutions.
"I was raised that, when you see a problem, you don't complain about it. You go and do something about it," Kamala said in an interview on Good Morning America. She has definitely proven herself to be a doer.
She went to Howard University and UC Hastings College of Law.
She graduated with a degree in political science and economics from Howard University in 1981. She then went on to study law at University of California Hastings College of Law, where she graduated in 1989. She passed the bar in 1990.
After passing the bar, she got to work.
In 1990, the Alameda County District Attorney's Office in Oakland, California, hired her as an assistant district attorney. Her focus was on prosecuting sex crimes. Then in 2003, she became the district attorney of the City and County of San Francisco, where she started a program that gives first-time drug offenders an opportunity to get their high school diploma.
She was one of the first elected officials in California to endorse Barack Obama.
During Barack Obama's presidential bid in 2008, Kamala Harris was one of the first political figures in California to endorse his candidacy. Still, she does not like to be compared to him or called "the female Obama" because, as she says, "I have my own legacy."
In 2010, she ran for attorney general in California, and nobody thought she would win.
Democratic strategist Garry South said at the time that the odds were stacked against her because she was “a woman who is a minority, who is anti-death penalty, who is district attorney of wacky San Francisco.” Everyone thought that the Republican candidate, Steve Cooley, would win, but guess what?
Three weeks after the election, she was declared the winner.
On election night, the San Francisco Chronicle announced that Steve Cooley had won. Steve Cooley made a speech and everything. Then three weeks later, after all the ballots had been counted, Kamala Harris was declared the winner. She won by a mere 0.8 percentage points. How's that for an exciting finish?
She got engaged to Douglas Emhoff in 2014.
Douglas Emhoff is a lawyer and partner at the DLA Piper law firm. He specializes in entertainment and intellectual property law. Doug and Kamala met on a blind date that was set up by a friend. Things must have gone well, because they got engaged on March 27, 2014.
They married just a little less than five months later.
No long engagement for these two. On August 22, they were married in a private ceremony at the Santa Barbara Courthouse. The couple exchanged vows that they had each written, and the officiant was Kamala’s sister, Maya.
She has two stepchildren.
Doug Emhoff has two children from a previous marriage, Ella and Cole. When Kamala and Doug got married, the kids decided to call her “Momala.” Momala was something they all decided on because, as Kamala has written, they “didn’t like the term ‘stepmom.’”
In 2016, she ran for and won a California Senate seat.
She beat Lorena Sanchez, a fellow Democrat with 20 years of experience, for the California Senate seat formerly held by Barbara Boxer. With that win, she became the second Black woman and the first South Asian woman to be elected to the US Senate. She is no stranger to firsts, and she believes in being the first, but never the last.
In 2020, she chose to announce her presidential campaign on a very special day.
Before she was chosen to run on the same ticket as Joe Biden, she ran against Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary race. She announced her campaign for the presidency on Martin Luther King Jr. Day because the civil rights leader is an inspiration to her. She also chose yellow, red, and blue as her campaign colors because those were the campaign colors of Shirley Chisholm, who in 1972 became the first Black woman to run for president in a major political party.
On August 11, 2020, she was selected as Joe Biden’s running mate.
Joe Biden went on to become the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party in 2020, and he asked Kamala Harris to be his running mate. During her acceptance speech for the Democratic National Convention, she took the time to recognize and thank the many women who came before her:
"This week marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment. And we celebrate the women who fought for that right. Yet so many of the Black women who helped secure that victory were still prohibited from voting, long after its ratification. But they were undeterred. Without fanfare or recognition, they organized, testified, rallied, marched, and fought—not just for their vote, but for a seat at the table. These women and the generations that followed worked to make democracy and opportunity real in the lives of all of us who followed."
On November 7, 2020, she became the projected vice-president-elect.
On November 7, 2020, after days of counting ballots nationwide and many tight races, Joe Biden was declared president-elect, making Kamala Harris the first-ever African American and Asian vice president-elect of the United States of America. Her motto, which she got from her mom, is: "You may be the first, but make sure you're not the last." And that is why her win is so significant to women and girls in this country, because she may be the first, but her first paves the way for more to come.
Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president of the United States on January 21, 2021.
On this day, Kamala Harris made history as the first woman to become vice president of the United States. "Even in dark times, we not only dream, we do," she said during her inspiring Inauguration speech. "We not only see what has been, we see what can be. We shoot for the moon, and then we plant our flag on it. We are bold, fearless, and ambitious. We are undaunted in our belief that we shall overcome; that we will rise up. This is American aspiration."
