Kamala Devi Harris became the first woman to be the Vice President of the United States of America. She is also the first Indian-origin US Senator. She announced her candidature on Martin Luther King Jr’s Day. Her mother was born in Tamil Nadu and her African-American father was from Jamaica.
Not only did Kamala Harris made history by being the first woman Vice President of the USA, but she has also been a great humanitarian. Here are some facts that you need to know about Kamala Harris:
First woman vice president of USA
She is the first black vice president.
Even though there have been many African-American vice-presidential candidates but Kamala Harris became the first African-American to get elected as the Vice President of the USA.
She is the first South Asian vice president.
There haven’t been a South Asian and especially an Indian-origin vice presidential candidate in the history of the US. Kamala Harris not only became the first South Asian candidate but also the first South Asian Vice President of the USA.
Kamala Harris has attended a historically black university.
After high school, Harris attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C.
Kamala began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, before being recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and later the City Attorney of San Francisco’s office.
In 2003, she was chosen district attorney of San Francisco. She was elected Attorney General of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014.
She was seven when her parents got divorced.
Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan was a cancer researcher, and her father, Donald J. Harris was a professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University. Her parents divorced when she was seven. Harris has stated that when she and her sister visited their father in Palo Alto on weekends, other children in the neighborhood were not allowed to play with them because they were black.
She has a younger sister, Maya Harris.
Maya Lakshmi Harris is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and television commentator. While in high school in Montreal, a 13-year-old Kamala along with Maya began a protest in front of their apartment building in objection to a policy that forbade children from playing on the lawn.
Kamala Harris has been victim to some controversies as well.
In 2012, when she was the attorney general, Harris was told to file a civil enforcement action on OneWest Bank for ‘widespread misconduct’ when confiscating homes. But, she declined to sue the bank or its then CEO Steven Mnuchin, who went on to serve as the Treasury Secretary for the Trump administration.
Kamala Harris is married to a Los Angeles based corporate lawyer.
Doug Emhoff married Kamala Harris in 2014. Doug became the first Second Gentleman of the USA.
Kamala Harris openly condemned Trump’s “Muslim-ban”.
On January 28, 2017, after Trump signed Executive Order 13769, banning citizens from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for ninety days, she reprobated the order and was one of many to call it a “Muslim ban”. She asked the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to visit her home and gathered information to push back upon the executive order.
Harris has been critical of Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg.
In April and May 2018, Harris challenged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook’s ill-usage of users’ data and whistleblower Christopher Wylie on reports that Cambridge Analytica stole the data from 87 million Facebook users to crush the votes of African Americans and the degree to which Facebook violated the privacy of its users.
Kamala Harris has been an active supporter of the LGBTQ+ community.
Over the years, she was worked on opposing Prop 8, ban the gay and trans panic defense, and the public safety of the LGBTQ+ community.
Kamala’s step-children call her ‘Momala’.
Harris is a stepmother to Emhoff’s two children from his previous marriage to the film producer Kerstin Emhoff.
She has written three books- two non-fiction and one children’s book.
Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer, Superheroes Are Everywhere and The Truths We Hold: An American Journey are the three books written by Kamala Harris.
As Vice President Kamala Harris makes history, we wish her more power!
