‘Lot of work ahead,’ says Kamala Harris after historic win
Kamala Harris becomes the first South Asian American and Black woman to become the Vice President of the United States.
Kamala Harris on Saturday urged Americans to “get started” as she became the first Black woman and the first south asian american to be elected as vice president of the United States. “This election is about so much more than @JoeBiden or me. It’s about the soul of America and our willingness to fight for it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get started,” she tweeted.
Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California and was brought up in a predominantly African American neighborhood of Berkeley. Her mother, Shyamala, emigrated from India to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where she met Harris’ Jamaican-born father, Donald.
Shyamala carved out a career as a renowned breast-cancer researcher, while Donald became a Stanford University economics professor. Harris has said in various speeches that her mother ensured that she and her younger sister, Maya, maintained ties to their Indian heritage by raising them with Hindu beliefs and taking them to her home country every couple of years.
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Harris attended the Westmount High School in Quebec and attended the Howard University in Washington, DC and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, earning her JD in 1989. After earning admittance to the State Bar of California in 1990, Harris began her career as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County. She became managing attorney of the Career Criminal Unit in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office in 1998, and in 2000 she was appointed chief of its Community and Neighborhood Division, during which time she established the state’s first Bureau of Children’s Justice. Harris started as a state attorney general in 2010.
Harris continued her political ascent by narrowly beating Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley for California attorney general in November 2010, making her both the first African American and the first woman to hold the position. Following the November 2016 elections, Harris became the second African American woman and the first South Asian American to win a seat in the US Senate. She even ran for the 2020 US presidential election but dropped out of the race before the end of the year. In August 2020, Joe Biden announced Harris as vice presidential running mate.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi congratulated Harris tweeting, “Congratulations, Vice-President-elect @KamalaHarris! It’s makes us proud that the first woman to serve as Vice President of the USA traces her roots to India.”
