What Are Some Key Facts About Kamala Harris's Political Career?

The first Black woman to be elected district attorney in California history, first woman to be California's attorney general, first Indian American senator, and now the first Black woman and first Asian American chosen as a vice presidential running mate on a major-party ticket Kamala Harris has spent the better part of two decades in public life notching up a long list of things she was the first to achieve.

Voters should know about the lady poised to shatter one of the highest glass ceilings in American history. Here, taken from books, a lot of media coverage, and the archives of POLITICO, is a brief overview of the life of Kamala Devi Harris, the pioneering prosecutor-turned-senator who could be a heartbeat away from the president.

Born October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, Kamala Devi Harris is the eldest of two children born to Donald Harris, an economist from Jamaica, and Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher from India.

1. Her parents bonded via a common love of the civil rights movement, which was prominent on UC Berkeley, when they were earning doctorate degrees. They brought small Kamala along to demonstrations in a stroller when she was born.
2. Her mother picked Kamala's name as an homage to the empowerment of women as well as her Indian roots—Kamala means "lotus" and is another name for the Hindu deity Lakshmi.
3. Gopalan told the Los Angeles Times in 2004, "a culture that worsishes goddesses produces strong women."
4. When Harris was seven years old, her parents split; her mother raised her and her sister, Maya, on the upper level of a yellow duplex in Berkeley.
5. Harris was bused in first grade to Thousand Oaks Elementary School, a second year of integration facility. She would perform "Miss Mary Mack" and cat's cradle with her pals on the bus from her mostly black, lower-middle-class neighborhood to her school situated in a rich white area for the next three years.
6. Harris embraced her Black and South Asian identities by visiting a Hindu temple as well as a Black Baptist church when a child. Later in her memoirs, Harris stated, "My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women."
7. She visited India as a young child and was particularly inspired by her grandmother, an activist who visited rural areas teaching underprivileged women about birth control, and grandfather, a high-ranking government official battling for Indian independence.
8. After her mother landed a teaching post at McGill University and a job as a cancer researcher at Jewish General Hospital, Harris attended middle school and high school in Montreal.
9. In Montreal, 13-year-old Harris and her younger sister Maya organized a successful protest in front of their apartment building against a rule prohibiting children from using the lawn.
10. Following high school, Harris enrolled at Washington, D.C.'s esteemed historically Black college, Howard University. She joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority while concentrating in political science and economics.

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