The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
» Historic day for VP Kamala Harris,
Daughter of Jamaican father, Indian mother now highest-ranking woman in U.S.
Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president of the United States on Wednesday, stepping into history as the highest-ranking woman in American history.
The moment reflected a historic rise at a time of historic crises. Harris, the 56-year-old daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, became the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent to hold an office that has been previously occupied solely by white men. She was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the nation’s highest court, a calculated choice from a former senator from California who has highlighted women of color during her career.
From the moment Harris stepped out of her motorcade, she and her husband, Doug Emhoff, were escorted by Eugene Goodman, the Black Capitol police officer who held off a mostly white mob of rioters during the attempted siege of that complex two weeks ago. Goodman also escorted her to the balcony where she took that oath.
She stepped out to a gathered crowd that included allies such as Hillary Clinton, who nearly broke the glass ceiling for women in the nation’s highest offices four years earlier, and recent adversaries, including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the subject of one of her mosttalked-about interrogations on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Harris, clad in a suit of purple designed by Black designers John Rogers and Sergio Hudson, took the oath of office on two Bibles. One belonged to civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice and a fellow Howard University graduate whom Harris, a former prosecutor, saw as a hero. The second belonged to Regina Shelton, a neighbor who was a second mother to Harris and her younger sister, Maya. Harris took her Senate oath on Shelton’s Bible in January 2017. Joe Biden administered that oath.
Harris’ term was historic from the moment she finished the oath, but she has the potential to be one of the most consequential vice presidents in American history. Democrats and Republicans each hold 50 seats in the U.S. Senate and, as president of the Senate, Harris holds the tie-breaking vote. The Democratic lean means the Biden-harris administration has a clearer path to enacting legislative priorities, including an expansion of federal health care subsidies, a comprehensive immigration overhaul and a tax increase on the wealthy.
Harris was one of more than two dozen Democrats who had vied to unseat President Donald Trump. She began the Democratic primary as an on-paper favorite, drawing one of its biggest crowds — more than 20,000 people — to her campaign launch in front of City Hall in Oakland, California.
But her campaign foundered, largely because of her inability to dislodge Biden’s base of support. By December 2019, she was out of money and exited the race before a single ballot was cast.
Harris, who was selected to the Senate the same day Trump became president, did not have the progressive track record to pry away loyalists to Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and she did not inspire the newcomer energy of Pete Buttigieg, then mayor of South Bend, Ind.
Instead, from the most diverse slate of candidates in history, Democrats searching for practicality and normalcy selected Biden — believing he had the best chance of defeating Trump in the general election.
At 78, Biden is the oldest president in the nation’s history, which thrusts additional importance on the person who would serve in his stead. Biden has said he considers himself a “transition candidate,” a label he cemented when he vowed to pick a woman as his running mate and interviewed more than a dozen.
But as the nation simmered with racial strife following the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police, liberal activists and congressional leaders pressured Biden to select a Black woman.
On Tuesday night, it was Harris who offered remarks to the nation as part of a brief memorial service for those lost to COVID-19. Her family — some white, some Black, stepchildren and beloved grandnieces — gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial ahead of time, snapping selfies that embodied the kind of modern American experience Harris has come to represent.
As Harris stood in St. Matthew of the Apostle on Wednesday morning, surrounded by high-profile politicians drenched in Washington tradition, her hometown basketball team — the Golden State Warriors — released a video of a young Black girl skipping through the streets of Oakland in Converses, the shoes Harris wore regularly on the campaign trail. That girl wore a Warriors jersey with No. 49, a symbol of the possibilities children see in Harris that they never saw before. Harris, the 49th vice president, will display a No. 49 Warriors jersey in her office. The back reads Madam Vice President — “MVP.”