The First Step
2023
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Kamala Devi Harris (born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney. Since 2021, she has been the 49th vice president of the United States under President Joe Biden . She is the first female ever in U.S. history elected to this office.
- She is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. Harris was born at Oakland, California’s Kaiser Hospital on October 20, 1964, to Indian American immigrant and breast cancer researcher, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan and Jamaica-born Donald Harris, an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford.
- Her name is a nod to her Indian heritage. Dr. Gopalan gave her daughter the name Kamala, which means “lotus” in Sanskrit and is another name for the Hindu deity Lakshmi, in part, to help preserve her cultural identity.
- She has a long history of activism. A 2004 Los Angeles Times profile recounted a favorite family story that began with Harris joining in protest chants from her stroller while her parents marched for civil rights in Oakland and Berkeley, California.
- She loves to cook. “As a child, I remember hearing the pots and smelling the food, and kind of like someone in a trance, I would walk into the kitchen to see all this incredible stuff happening,” Harris recalled in a May 2020 Glamour interview.
Nov 7, 2020 · Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is the first woman, the first Black person and the first Asian American elected to the second highest office in the United States.
Jan 18, 2021 · Biography of Vice President Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris was born October 20, 1964, to a Black Stanford University professor, her father, and a Tamil Indian mother who was a physician. In August 2020, Harris became the first Black woman, the first person of Indian descent, and the fourth woman in U.S. history to be selected for a presidential ...
- Nadra Kareem Nittle
Aug 12, 2020 · Kamala Harris is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party. A barrier-breaking prosecutor with a love for grilling...
Nov 3, 2020 · Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) was elected vice president of the United States on November 3, 2020. She received 306 electoral votes in the Electoral College on December 14, 2020, along with former Vice President Joe Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket.
