Dare to dream: Kamala Harris' Story

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Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964 as the first child of two immigrant parents - Donald Harris, a Jamaican American; and Shyamala Gopalan, an Indian American. Her parents had met at Berkley University during the civil rights movement, and her mother braved the disapproval of her acquaintances back in India to refuse what would probably have been an arranged marriage and marry instead the love of her life. Kamala was their first child.

From the beginning of Kamala’s life, she was taught to be proud of her heritage. “Kamala” is a traditional Indian name meaning “lotus flower,” which is an important component of Indian culture. When Kamala’s younger sister was born two years later, she also received an Indian name - Maya. However, Kamala and Maya were taught to be proud of their Black culture, too. Their parents instilled in them tremendous pride in both sides of their ancestry.

The girls’ parents separated when Maya was still very young, and although the girls still saw their father regularly, their mother became their main guardian. She and her girls were very close. They cooked dinner together and listened to music. Their mother even allowed them to choose the color of their car - yellow!

When the time came to select a college, Kamala knew what her future career would be. She wanted to be someone who was asked for advice, who was able to advocate for fairness, who could make the right thing happen no matter what. She wanted to be a lawyer. And she wanted to attend Howard University, a college that had accepted African Americans back when the country’s air was pungent with racism, where the renowned civil rights leader Thurgood Marshall himself had attended.

So she applied. And she got in.

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Kamala was extremely devoted to Howard University. During Freshman year, she launched her first campaign, running for her class representative of the Liberal Arts Student Council. She was a member of the debate team and the chairwoman of the economics society. She also joined a sorority - Alpha Kappa Alpha.

During the summer before her sophomore year, Harris earned an internship in the office of California Senator Alan Cranston, who occupied the same Senate seat that Harris herself would one day be elected to! She loved that job. In the memoir she’s written, The Truths We Hold, Kamala states: “I loved going to the Capitol Building every day that summer for work. It felt like the epicenter of change—and even as an intern sorting mail, I was thrilled to be a part of it. But I was even more mesmerized by the Supreme Court Building, across the street. I would walk across the street in the hot, humid summer, when you could cut the air with a butter knife, just so I could stand in awe of its magnificence and read the words engraved in marble above its entrance: EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW. I imagined a world where that might be.”

After she graduated from Howard, Kamala decided to attend the UC Hastings College of Law in Oakland, CA. She now knew what she wanted to do - she wanted to work under the District Attorney (DA) as a federal prosecutor, to uproot bias and inequality from the criminal justice system and make it a just way to figure out if people deserved to be convicted for crimes that they may or may not have committed. She wanted to be someone who strove for justice and harmony, who held people accountable for their crimes, but also fought against mistaken imprisonments. She wanted to be a leader. She wanted to work for the people.

During the last weeks of her internship, Kamala was proud to receive a job offer as deputy district attorney. She’d need to complete law school and pass the bar exam, which would officially qualify her as someone with the ability to practice law, and then she’d be free to accept the offer.

But it wasn’t that simple. When the bar exam results were released, Kamala discovered that she had failed. She was shocked. Incredulous. Crushed. Kamala writes in The Truths we Hold, “I couldn’t get my head around it. It was almost too much to bear.” How could she keep working now? How could she believe that she could be who she wanted to be? Harris was sorely tempted to give up on her dream, but how could she do that now? How could she let go of all of the work she’d done to get this far?

She couldn’t. So she didn’t. She kept on with her job in the office of the DA and took the bar exam again a few months later. That time, she passed. Now, she was doing what she’d dreamed of, what she’d hoped for, what she’d wanted more than anything, and what she’d worked for. She was now a prosecutor. She could now bring some leverage to her fight for justice.

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Kamala first focused on the prosecution of “violent felonies,” or major offenses. Then she moved on to prosecuting sexual crimes, such as rape and child sexual abuse. Eventually, a friend of hers - and also the San Francisco city attorney - named Louise Renne offered her a job as the leader of the section in her office that worked on child/family services. Kamala accepted on the condition that she could work to bolster this area as a whole instead of overseeing individual cases. It was important to her that children could get a chance to repair their lives before they turned to a path impossible to reverse and ended up in prison.

This job meant the world to her, and it was the feeling of truly being able to make change that set her sights on a campaign for the DA position. Kamala Harris was about to run for public office for the first time - but certainly not the last.