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Kamala Harris accepted her place in history Saturday night with a speech honoring the women who she said “paved the way for this moment tonight,” when the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants would appear before the nation as vice president-elect of the United States.
With her rise to the second-highest office in the nation, the 56-year-old Harris will become the first woman and the first woman of color to be elected vice president, a reality that shaped her speech and brought tears to the eyes of many women and girls who saw her from the hoods of their cars in a convention center parking lot in Wilmington, Delaware.
In an all-white pantsuit, in apparent tribute to the suffragettes who fought for the right to vote for women, Harris smiled exultantly as he waved from the podium, hoping the blare of car horns and cheers would subside. Joe Biden, the president-elect, would speak next. This was a moment for her.
He began his remarks with a tribute to the legacy of the late Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis.
“Protecting our democracy requires a fight,” Harris said. “It takes sacrifice. But there is joy in it. And there is progress. Because we, the people, have the power to build a better future ”.
With Harris poised to become the highest-ranking woman in American government history, this milestone marks the extraordinary arc of a political career that has broken down gender and racial barriers in almost every way. As a prosecutor, she became California’s first black attorney general. When she was elected to the Senate in 2016, she became the second black woman in history to serve on the chamber.
In her comments, Harris paid tribute to the women across the country, and throughout history, who paved the way for this moment. She specifically honored the contributions of black women to the fight for suffrage, equality and civil rights, leaders who are “too often overlooked, but often shown to be the backbone of our democracy.”
As a presidential candidate, Harris spoke often of her childhood attending civil rights marches with her parents, who were students at the University of California, Berkeley. When protests erupted following the police murder of George Floyd this summer, Harris joined activists on the streets to demand an end to police brutality and racial injustice.
As Biden searched for a running mate, the pressure to choose a black woman increased in recognition not only of the role they played in saving his presidential campaign, which Biden acknowledged in his remarks Saturday night, but also of their importance to him. party as a whole. . However, a narrative began to form that Harris was a somewhat conventional choice, a senator, and a longtime Democratic rival who brought generational, ideological, and racial balance to the Democratic roster.
But Harris emphatically disagreed, saying her presence on stage was a testament to “Joe’s character – that he had the audacity to break down one of the most substantial barriers in our country and select a woman as his vice president.” .
Yet Harris’s presence on the ballot was not only a reflection of the nation’s demographic future, but a repudiation of a president who relentlessly scapegoated immigrants and repeatedly targeted women and people of color.
In a moment of reflection, Harris recalled his mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who left her home in India for California in 1958 at the age of 19.
“Maybe he didn’t imagine this moment,” Harris said. “But she believed deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible.”
In interviews and on the campaign trail, Harris has often quoted his mother, sharing the advice and warnings of a woman he describes as diminutive in stature but powerful in her presence.
On Saturday, Harris made a promise to the country.
“While I may be the first woman in this office,” Harris promised, “I will not be the last, because all the girls who watch tonight see that this is a country of possibilities.”
