In 2017, Kamala D. Harris was sworn in as a United States Senator to represent California, becoming both the second African-American woman and first South Asian-American senator in U.S. history. Kamala currently serves on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on the Budget.
In 2021 she was sworn in as our nation’s first Black woman Vice President.
As a U.S. Senator, she introduced and cosponsored legislation to raise wages for working people, reform our broken criminal justice system, make healthcare a right for all Americans, address the epidemic of substance abuse, support veterans and military families, and expand access to childcare for working parents.
Kamala has championed the rights of sexual assault survivors and led the charge against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. As president, she will nominate judges who know Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, protect Planned Parenthood from Republican attempts to defund essential health services, and address racial disparities in maternal health care.
Born in Oakland, California, Kamala Harris is a graduate of Howard University, and she earned her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.
Growing up, Kamala had a stroller’s eye view of the Civil Rights Movement. Through the examples of courageous leaders such as Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley, and Charles Hamilton Houston, she learned the kind of character required to stand up to the powerful, and she resolved to spend her life advocating for those who could not defend themselves.
Addressing the country’s long, tortured history of lynching is an issue that Senator Harris has taken on. Since 1918 Congress had tried but failed roughly 200 times to pass anti-lynching legislation. On February 14, 2019, Senator Harris introduced The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act, which would criminalize lynching for the first time in American history. She was joined by her colleagues Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina in sponsoring the bill. The motion was passed, marking a historic step towards the first federal anti-lynching law in the United States.
Kamala led the team that helped bring down California’s Proposition 8 at the U.S. Supreme Court and to fight for marriage equality nationwide.