Kamala Harris, who made history by being elected as the first vice president of the United States, remembered her Indian mother on Saturday as she addressed the nation in the first speech after the victory in the US presidential election. “I am grateful to the woman most responsible for my presence here today, my mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris,” she said at a drive-in rally in Joe Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
“When he came here from India at the age of 19, maybe he didn’t imagine this moment,” Harris said as well. “But she believed deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible,” he added.
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“I’m thinking of her and the generations of women … who have paved the way for this moment tonight,” she also said as she paid tribute to Black, Asian, White, Latina and Native American women for their role in the American politics.
The daughter of an Indian immigrant and a Jamaican-born father, Kamala Harris is the first woman to be elected vice president of the United States. Her father, Donald Harris, was from Jamaica, and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist from Chennai.
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Harris’s maternal grandfather was born in Thulasenthirapuram, located about 200 miles south of Chennai city, Tamil Nadu. Shyamala was the daughter of PV Gopalan, a high-ranking official.
Additionally, she declared her victory as the start for women in her inaugural address on Saturday. “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” Harris said in her acceptance speech at a rally in Delaware.
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“All the girls who watch tonight see that this is a country of possibilities,” she said.
Harris, a US Senator from California, has a history of breaking glass ceilings. She served as San Francisco’s first female district attorney and was the first California woman of color to be elected attorney general.
His criminal justice background could help the Biden administration address issues of racial equality and policing after the country was razed by protests this year. She is expected to be one of the top judicial nomination advisers.
(With contributions from the agency)
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