Biography Of Kamala Devi Harris – The Second African-American To Become A Senator (Joe Biden Vice Running Mate)

After defeating Loretta Sanchez in the 2016 senate election, Kamala Harris was sworn-in in 2017 as the United States Senator for California, making her the first South Asian-American senator in the history of the United States, and the second black American woman to become a senator.

55-year-old Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California. She grew up in the black American neighborhood of Berkeley, where she attended a black Baptist church and a Hindu temple with her younger sister, Maya Harris. She was also a member of the Baptist choir.

Her mother, who was a daughter of an Indian Diplomat and a breast cancer-researcher, Shyamala Gopalan, came to the United States from India to attend the University of California, Berkeley met Donald Harris, a Jamaican born professor in Stanford University.

Kamala Harris’s parents divorced when she was seven, although she and her sister used to go to her father’s side in Palo Alto on weekends.
Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where she did her high school at Westmount High School.
With political traits found in her, Kamala once protested against a building owner who disallowed neighborhood kids from playing on the lawn.

After graduating from Westmount, Kamala moved back to the United States, where she got admitted to Howard University, where she earned an undergraduate degree and earned a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the law.

Kamala’s younger sister, Maya, went on to become a public policy advocate while Kamala began her career at Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

In 1998, she was the managing attorney of the career criminal unit at San Francisco District Attorney’s office until 2000 when she became chief of its Community and Neighborhood Division, establishing the state’s first Bureau of Children’s Justice.
Becoming the San Francisco District Attorney in 2003, Kamala defeated her former boss, Terence Hallinan.

Among her achievements as the District Attorney, Kamala launched an initiative that offers educational programs and job training for low-level offenders.

In November 2010, Kamala defeated Steve Cooley. He was the Los Angeles County District Attorney to become the California Attorney General, which automatically made her both the first Black American and the first woman to ever hold the position.

Kamala Harris was the person to officiate the first same-sex marriage in California since the introduction of Prop 8.

However, Kamala was remembered to have announced her intention to run for the Presidential election in 2020, under the Democratic party.
After the announcement she made on January 21 2019, she came back to announce her discontinued plan of running for the presidency.

On August 11, 2020, a presidential candidate under the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, announced Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate.
She became the fourth woman in history to compete on a major party’s presidential ticket.
Kamala Harris is married to Attorney Douglas Emhoff in 2014. She became the stepmother to Douglas Emhoff’s two children.

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