Kamala Harris: The First Female Vice President, a celebration
“My mother had a saying: ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do things, but make sure you’re not the last”
-Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris has accepted her place in history as the First Female Vice President and she has said, “I will not be the last”. Not only is Harris’s gender a first for Vice President, but also her heritage. Kamala is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants.
Ahead of the president-elect speech at a victory event in Delaware, Harris took to the podium to share her thanks and thoughts on the historic moment.
Harris thanked her family and remembered her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris “When she came here from India at the age of 19 she maybe didn’t quite imagine this moment,” she said. “But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible.
“So I am thinking about her and the generations of women – Black women, Asian, white, Latina, natives 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 too often overlooked but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy.”
A California Democrat who previously served as the state’s attorney general, Harris’s presidential campaign revolved around the promise to be a fighter ‘for the people’.
We have put together a gallery of pictures celebrating Kamala Harris’s life so far.
Young Kamala Harris
Harris is seen with her mother Shyamala.
"My mother was born in India and came to the United States to study at UC Berkeley, where she eventually became an endocrinologist and breast-cancer researcher," Harris wrote. "She, and so many other strong women in my life, showed me the importance of community involvement and public service."
Harris tweeted in this photo in debate with Joe Biden over his opposition many years ago to the federal government mandating busing to integrate schools. In the tweet she said "There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school," she tweeted. "That little girl was me."
Kamala Harris, right, protests South African apartheid with classmate Gwen Whitfield on the National Mall in November 1982.
Harris graduates from law school in 1989. "My first grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson (left), came to cheer me on," Harris said. "My mom was pretty proud, too."
Harris is joined by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, left, and the Rev. Cecil Williams, center, for a San Francisco march celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. in January 2004. Harris was the city's district attorney from 2004 to 2011.
By Paul Sakuma
Harris, as a new member of the Senate, participates in a re-enacted swearing-in with Vice President Joe Biden in January 2017. She is the first Indian-American and the second African-American woman to serve as a US senator.
by Aaron P. Bernstein
Harris attends the Women's March on Washington in January 2017.
by Noam Galai