Vice President Kamala Harris not only grew up in San Francisco’s East Bay Area with the divorced mother who raised her but with various play-aunts and uncles too. These fictive kin included her Uncle Sherman, who taught her chess so she would know how to move in the world, and her Aunt Chris, who attended Howard University in the 1950s.
“She was one of my incredible role models growing up, and that was one of the big reasons I wanted to go to Howard University and pledge Alpha Kappa Alpha,” Harris revealed on the Club Shay Shay podcast Monday.
Earlier this month, Harris made it clear that she intends “to be the first HBCU president,” a possibility that has energized community members from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) as the Harris-Walz campaign in October toured these academic institutions in battleground states. The HBCU students and faculty mobilizing for Harris hope that her candidacy draws attention to the unique experiences their schools provide. At the same time, they recognize how voter suppression, a gender divide and disinformation may shape this groundbreaking election in the end.
“Vice President Harris understands the importance of speaking directly to HBCU students and alumni about the issues that matter most to them,” Marcus W. Robinson, a Democratic National Committee senior spokesperson, told The 19th in a statement. “Democrats and the Harris-Walz campaign are listening to the voices of Black voters — and specifically young Black voters — who know that the stakes of this election are immensely high.”
Harris is a 1986 graduate of Howard, which is in Washington. D.C., and counts the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall among its distinguished alumni. Nearly four years ago, she was sworn in as vice president with his Bible. Howard opened in 1867, a time when most White colleges excluded students of color.
“HBCUs place an emphasis on growing the student, nurturing the student, helping them to develop the skills to flourish in society and contribute to elevating justice and the human spirit,” said Silas Lee, an adjunct professor in the sociology department of Xavier University of Louisiana, the nation’s only Catholic HBCU. “They focus on the potential that students have and removing that sense of doubt and insecurity that many may have, so that is a critical element that they may not receive at other institutions, because what you have is culturally competent and responsive education at HBCUs.”
Black students who attend HBCUs are more likely to graduate from college than their counterparts at predominantly White institutions (PWIs), according to the White House, which estimates that HBCUs account for 70 percent of Black doctors and 80 percent of Black judges. During Harris’ tenure as vice president, the White House has directed $17 billion in federal funding to HBCUs, more than any other administration.
Howard University senior Christina Pierre-Louis, a political science major from New Jersey, is overjoyed to be casting her first ballot in a presidential election for a fellow Bison, the school’s mascot. She considers Harris to be a kindred spirit.
Born to immigrant parents — an Indian mother and a Jamaican father — Harris studied law and served as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general before becoming a senator and vice president. The 21-year-old shares the vice president’s Caribbean background and interest in the law, with plans to attend law school to become a civil rights attorney.
“Honestly, the big word for me is ‘representation.’ As a young Black woman who is attending her alma mater, who is studying some of the same things she studied, it just solidifies the idea that there’s no limit to what I can achieve,” said Pierre-Louis, the social justice director for Howard’s chapter of the National Council of Negro Women, a nonprofit that has advocated for Black women, families and communities since 1935. Its founding president, Mary McLeod Bethune, established Bethune-Cookman University, an HBCU in Florida.
Elsie L. Scott, director of the Ronald W. Walters Leadership & Public Policy Center at Howard, said that after Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate, student sentiment about the election shifted from indifference to enthusiasm. Women make up over 70 percent of students and they especially “are feeling like this is real empowerment for them,” Scott said. “The major issue where she’s captured their attention has been around abortion rights.”
Harris has made reproductive justice a focal point of her campaign in contrast to former President Donald Trump, who appointed three conservative judges to the Supreme Court, which led to the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and left abortion rights to the states. During campaign events, Harris has discussed Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old Black woman who left Georgia to obtain the abortion pill but died after experiencing rare complications because her medical care was reportedly delayed under the state’s abortion ban.
Concerned about the stakes of the presidential election, Howard students are taking action. In mid-October, Scott arranged transportation for a busload of them to engage in nonpartisan canvassing in battleground Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Pierre-Louis is organizing an event to raise awareness about voter suppression.
“I’ll have a station with really long lines,” she said. “I’ll have some students come up and give me their Bison ID, and I’ll tell them it’s invalid and have them go to the back of the line.”
In 36 states, the public must present identification to vote, with acceptable forms of ID varying from one state to another. In Georgia, for example, IDs from the state’s public colleges and universities are accepted while those from private institutions are not, a restriction that may be unfamiliar to students.
Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, recommends that voters verify their registration, address and ID before Election Day. College students casting absentee ballots should not wait until November 5 to put them in the mail either because some states require that votes be received by Election Day rather than postmarked by then. The Advancement Project encourages anyone who can early vote in-person to do so to address hiccups ahead of time. Early voting also helps to reduce lines on Election Day.
“Right now, Georgia does have this rule in place that you cannot provide food and water to people standing in line within 150 feet of a polling place,” Browne Dianis said, noting that during the 2020 election, voters queued up for as long as 10 hours. “What we’ve seen again and again is that Black people and students turn out in record numbers, and then what we see is the next year laws and policies are passed to do away with the things that made voting easier and more accessible.”
At Atlanta’s Spelman College, one of the stops on the Harris-Walz campaign’s HBCU tour, the community has invested heavily in educating students about voting, said Cynthia Spence, associate professor of sociology. During the Spelman and Morehouse College homecoming over the weekend, Planned Parenthood Votes Black Campaigns mobilized 40,000 Georgia voters who pledged to back candidates committed to abortion rights.
Harris has overwhelming support at the women’s college.
“They, in fact, every day inhabit these intersectional lives of being Black, being female,” Spence said. “They understand that the world responds to them in particular ways using certain racial tropes, certain gender tropes. They can imagine what Kamala Harris’ experiences have been.”
At nearby Clark Atlanta University, where the campaign also stopped, senior Jayden Williams said the vice president and her running mate give him hope that equality will remain a priority in this country. The 21-year-old from Stockbridge, Georgia, is a 2024 White House HBCU Scholar, a program that recognizes HBCU students for their academic excellence, civic and campus engagement, or entrepreneurial spirit. Williams named reproductive freedom, human rights, gender rights and student loan forgiveness as his top concerns, but the Harris supporter said he’s encountered some young Black men who are backing Trump.
“Can you name the policies that he wants to implement?” Williams has asked them. “Can you name his policies that were instrumental to the success of marginalized communities? What has he done for marginalized communities in your area?”
Usually, he said, they can’t answer.
Twenty-six percent of Black men ages 18-40 said they support Trump, more than double the percentage of Black women (12 percent) who said they would, according to the University of Chicago’s GenForward poll of over 2,300 young adults released October 23. The NAACP, meanwhile, said on a press call Monday that Black men under 50 became less likely to vote for Trump (27-21 percent) and more likely to vote for Harris (51-59 percent) from August to October, according to its polling data in partnership with Hart Research and HIT Strategies.
Pierre-Louis, the Howard student, said that the young Black men she’s met who support Trump have based that decision on disinformation. They question Harris’ loyalty to the Black community after Trump has repeatedly — and falsely — insinuated that she hasn’t identified as Black throughout her life. Others resent the fact that Harris was formerly a prosecutor, even though Trump intends to militarize law enforcement, ramp up executions and put thousands of people back into prison — policies that would directly affect Black men, who are disproportionately incarcerated. In contrast, Harris launched a program to lower recidivism as California’s attorney general.
Some Black Trump supporters tout the former president’s economic policy, Pierre-Louis said. “He gave us a stimulus check,” they’ve told her.
At an Atlanta rally with Harris on Thursday, former President Barack Obama disputed the notion that the public received stimulus checks from Trump after 2020’s coronavirus lockdowns. Trump’s name appeared on the checks, but Congress signed the legislation responsible for the economic impact payments.
“Do not fall for that okey-doke,” Obama told the crowd. “Don’t be bamboozled.”
He reminded the crowd that the public received stimulus checks during his presidency, too. An economic impact payment also went out at the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term, but neither he nor Obama put their names on the checks, which Trump insisted on reportedly.
To boost Black men’s support of her, Harris recently released her Opportunity Agenda for Black Men, which includes initiatives related to housing, healthcare, entrepreneurship and investments in HBCUS.
Beyond ignorance about Trump’s record is how gender factors into this election cycle, Williams said.
“I do think it’s hard for some people to vote for a woman,” he said. “However, we do have to remember that Hillary Clinton did get the popular vote.”
Wesley J. Bellamy, chair of the department of political science and public administration at Virginia State University, which the Harris-Walz campaign’s HBCU tour visited, doubts that young Black men will support Trump in significant numbers.
“I’m the National Public Policy chairman for the 100 Black Men of America,” he said. “We’ve been on a 24-city tour across the country talking to men about voting, and I will say that 85 to 90 percent of Black men across all age groups have stated their emphatic support for Harris. Will you have the 10 to 12, maybe even 14 percent of individuals who say that they’re not? I think so, but I think that’s also on par with what we saw from the Biden campaign a couple of years back.”
Lee, of Xavier University, chalks up the young Black men voting for Trump to a generational divide. They grew up with a Black president in the 21st Century, a period markedly different from the social upheaval that characterized the 1900s — from the Montgomery Bus Boycott of the 1950s to the Los Angeles Uprising of the 1990s.
“There’s a different level of social cohesion that they have with the political and social institutions,” Lee said. “Older Black men . . . have been able to observe and live through the social and political changes of racism and discrimination, whereas the Gen Zers and the millennials — they are experiencing what we call, in sociology, laissez faire racism, whereby America may preach ideals, but it is not honest in fulfilling and eliminating those barriers.”
Harris also has detractors who are not Trumpers but progressive students who disapprove of Biden’s aid to Israel during its war in Gaza. They question why the vice president hasn’t committed to policies to stop civilian casualties.
“This is an issue that students have valid concerns about, and I, too, have those concerns,” said Spence, the Spelman professor. “What we’ve attempted to do is to just talk about how complicated these issues are . . . Kamala Harris cannot wave a magic wand and make it all go away, but certainly we do hope that she will become forceful in her position.”
If Harris unites voters with an array of interests to become the first “HBCU” and woman president, the start of her term will coincide with the National Council of Negro Women’s 90th anniversary year. When that organization began, it was inconceivable that a Black woman could achieve what Harris has.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Pierre-Louis said of a woman president. “I think even if she doesn’t win, just the Democratic nomination in and of itself is enough for our founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, to be proud.”
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