From Howard to VP: Kamala Harris Alpha Kappa Alpha Sisters Keep Her Centered She was a Howard University senior working toward a career in public service, mature thanks to her four years on campus and committed to strengthening the bond with her line sisters By Shawn Yancy and Briana Trujillo •
Published January 18, 2021 •
Updated on January 19, 2021 at 9:12 pm
NBC Universal, Inc.
The year was 1986. Howard University was bursting with the voracious energy of student minds protesting apartheid in South Africa, rallying for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, and launching themselves into service projects and campus life.
Not least among them were the sisters of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. Their chapter that year would boast 38 Black young women, eager to form a sisterhood since the chapter had not had a line or new membership intake the year prior. They were the 38 Jewels of Iridescent Splendor. Thirty-eight line sisters.
Font Size
On Monday, the network morning shows were eagerly awaiting President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration as hosts and correspondents touted his laundry list of leftist agenda items he planned to enact by fiat in his first few days in office. Of course none of the broadcasts actually labeled the proposed executive actions as liberal, but merely as an effort “aimed at reversing some of President Trump’s most controversial policies.”
“President-Elect Biden lays out an ambitious agenda. What Americans can expect in his first 100 days in office,” co-host Robin Roberts proclaimed at the top of ABC’s
Good Morning America. Minutes later, correspondent Mary Bruce excitedly announced that Biden’s series of controversial unilateral orders were
Live updates: Harris resigns Senate seat; Biden participates in national day of service Amy B Wang, Felicia Sonmez, John Wagner
How Biden and D.C. are preparing for an inauguration like no other
Replay Video UP NEXT Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris resigned her Senate seat Monday, stepping down four years after she was elected as California’s junior senator. She sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, with her resignation effective at noon. President-elect Joe Biden volunteered at a hunger relief organization in Philadelphia as part of a national day of service coordinated by his inaugural committee ahead of his swearing-in at a heavily fortified Capitol on Wednesday.
But her name Sharda always gave her away.
All her life, Sekaran has searched for other “Blindians” people with one Black and one Indian parent. The closest she came was the couple in “Mississippi Masala,” she says, a 1991 movie about a Black man and an Indian woman who fall in love.
In 2010, she says, she heard about a woman running for attorney general in California. She looked Black. But her name gave her away.
Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris will make history in a lot of different ways when she is inaugurated on Jan. 20. The daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, she will be the first Black vice president and the first Indian American vice president, as well as the first woman to hold elected office in the White House. Her racial identities are often discussed separately, heralded as a win for two different groups. But Harris also exists at a unique cultural intersection: Both Black and Indian, she will elevate a community that has struggled for