As vice president-elect, Kamala Harris makes history
On Saturday, unofficial vote totals in Pennsylvania prompted the Associated Press and other news organizations to call the state for Democrat Joe Biden, giving him just over the necessary 270 electoral votes needed to become the 46th president of the United States.
While Biden marks the next in a long line of men to hold the highest office in the land, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will break several glass ceilings at the White House when Biden is inaugurated in January.
Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, will not only be the first woman to hold the office of the vice presidency — she will also be the first Black woman and first South Asian American woman to become vice president.
A century after women won the right to vote, Harris, wearing suffragette white on Saturday night, spoke about her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, in her victory speech in Wilmington, Del.
“When she came here from India, at the age of 19, she maybe didn’t quite imagine this moment,” Harris said. “But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible.”
Harris also had a message for “the generations of women, Black women, Asian, White, Latina, Native American women who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight,” she said. “Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all, including the Black women who are often, too often, overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy.
“I stand on their shoulders,” Harris said.
Watch Harris’ full speech here or using the link below.