California’s junior senator, Kamala Devi Harris, 56, is the first woman to win on a national ticket, and will be the next vice president of the United States of America.
This will see her make history as the first woman, the first Black person and the first Asian American to be elected America’s Vice President. Kamala Harris will also be the first graduate of a historically Black college (HBCU) and first member of a Black sorority to attain the 2nd highest ranking office of the US.
Harris was born in Oakland, California, in 1964, to parents who raised her in a bassinet of civil rights activism. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, an Indian immigrant, was a breast cancer researcher; she died of cancer in 2009; while her father, Donald Harris is a renowned Jamaican American professor of economics. After high school, Harris attended Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, D.C.
Kamala Harris vied for the Democratic presidential nomination but could not gather the much needed momentum so she dropped out in December 2019.
As the Senate’s only Black woman, Harris emerged as a leading voice on racial justice and police reform after Minneapolis police killed African-American man George Floyd in May. Harris is married to attorney Douglas Emhoff, who has been a fixture on the campaign trail.
Harris tweeted a video of herself on the phone with President-elect Joe Biden shortly after Associated Press and CNN projected their win.
“We did it, we did it, Joe. You’re going to be the next president of the United States,” she said laughing.
According to a press release from the Biden-Harris campaign, Biden will address America at 8pm (ET) Saturday night in Wilmington Delaware.