Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters rejoice over Kamala Harris victory

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The Atlanta lawyer said she turned on her cell phone when she landed in Richmond, Virginia, saw a stream of 72 messages and “I thought ‘that must be it” . ”

Kamala Harris had become the first woman, the first black woman, the first South Asian – and yes, the first member of the legendary Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority – elected vice president.

The celebrations began at baggage claim – where Arrington and his sister Valyncia Saunders took to singing. It hasn’t stopped since.

Harris’ victory particularly resonates with Arrington, Saunders and the group of friends gathered at a beach house in the Outer Banks of North Carolina this week. They all attended Howard University, graduating more than a dozen years after Harris in 1986. And they all followed and supported her political career – from her rise as the first woman to become California attorney general. , upon her election as the first black woman to represent California in the US Senate and, now, at the gates of the White House.

“His story is our story,” Saunders, who practices law in Richmond, said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “I can’t explain how fundamentally this changes the life of every black and brunette little girl in this country.”

Harris – the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father – entered Howard University, one of the nation’s oldest historically black colleges and universities, after growing up in Northern California and studying secondary school in Montreal, while her mother was researching breast cancer. at McGill University.

In one Interview 2018 on The Breakfast Club A syndicated radio show, Harris described Howard as crucial in shaping his identity. “What you learn in an HBCU is that you don’t have to adapt to someone’s limited perspective of what it means to be young, talented, and black,” she said.

Harris’s ties to his alma mater, the sorority, and the broader Nine Divines – as the council of the nine historically black fraternities and sororities is known – were reaffirmed through his historic candidacy for the White House. She even occasionally worked in an office at Howard’s in the later reaches of the campaign.

This AKA fraternity also made its presence felt in this election. As soon as Joe Biden picked Harris as his running mate in August, incremental donations of $ 19.08 – marking the year 1908, when the sorority was founded in Howard – began hitting the account of a joint fundraising committee the Biden- Harris campaign worked with the Democratic National Committee.

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Arrington and other AKA sisters say this reflects a long-standing practice of the sorority celebrating its founding in ways big and small. The friends’ reunion on the beach this week could include “an evening happy hour at 6:08 a.m. daily,” Arrington said with a laugh.

That a black woman helped end President Donald Trump’s racist tenure “is the icing on the cake,” said Jacqueline Brooks, another of AKA friends meeting at the North Carolina beach house.

On the day Trump was elected, Brooks said his then-teenage daughter, Breanna McDonald, broke down in tears. “She looked at me and said, ‘How could they choose him?’ Because of racism and tension. As a mother, it broke my heart. “

“But to now look up and see a black woman as vice president, I’m able to say to her, ‘Remember those tears you cried?’ Said Brooks, a banker who lives in Bethesda, Maryland. “All we had to do was keep fighting and believing that truth, honesty and dignity would prevail because this is the life we want.

“This is the world we want for our children and this is the country we want to be.”

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