(CHICAGO) — Vice President Kamala Harris has rarely discussed her gender or racial identity on the 2024 campaign trail — not even responding directly to Donald Trump falsely questioning whether she was truly Black.
But at the Democratic National Convention this week, trailblazing Black women have set the stage for Harris on Thursday to make history as the first Black and South Asian woman to accept a major party’s nomination for president.
First it was Michelle Obama, who despite her aversion to partisan politics reentered the spotlight to back “my girl Kamala Harris.”
In rousing remarks on Tuesday, Obama said she and Harris were similarly raised by mothers who believed in the promise of America and encouraged them to do something for others.
“So, with that voice in her head, Kamala went out and she worked hard in school, graduating from an HBCU, earning her law degree at a state school,” she said. “And then she went on to work for the people, fighting to hold lawbreakers accountable, strengthening the rule of law, fighting to give folks better wages, cheaper prescription drugs, a good education, decent health care, child care, elder care.”
“From a middle-class household, Kamala worked her way up to become vice president of the United States of America,” Obama said, prompting loud applause.
The former first lady also had some of the sharpest words yet for Trump on the issue of race, as she reflected on her family being the target of some of his vitriolic rhetoric and warned Harris is likely to face the same.
“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” she said. “See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black. I want to know who’s going to tell him, who’s going to tell him, that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”
“It’s his same old con. His same old con. Doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better,” she added.
The following night, television legend Oprah Winfrey made a surprise appearance to endorse Harris. In doing so, Winfrey reinforced Harris’ historic path to the nomination and possibly the presidency.
Her speech included a tribute to Tessie Provost Williams, one of the “New Orleans Four” who helped integrate the city’s public schools in 1960. Williams died earlier this year at the age of 69.
“It was the grace and guts and courage of women like Tessie Prevost Williams that paved the way for another young girl, who nine years later became part of the second class to integrate the public schools in Berkeley, California,” Winfrey said, the other young girl being Harris.
During the 2019 Democratic primary race, Harris famously mentioned her backstory with busing. In one of the most salient moments of her campaign, she sparred with President Joe Biden on stage at the debate about school segregation and busing.
“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” Harris said, “and that little girl was me.”
Winfrey framed the election as a series of choices between common sense and nonsense, bitterness and joy.
“Soon and very soon, we’re going to be teaching our daughters and sons about how this child of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, two idealistic, energetic immigrants — how this child grew up to become the 47th President of the United States,” Winfrey said. “That is the best of America.”
It remains to be seen if Harris plays on similar themes as she accepts the nomination on Thursday, which will mark the biggest speech of her political career.
Among her key objectives for the address, a campaign official said, is to share her personal story as well as her professional background.
The official said Harris will root her optimism about the future in her faith in the American people.
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