Music icon Beyoncé joined Kamala Harris‘ campaign in Houston, Texas, on Friday.
Reports had circulated earlier in the week about the famous American singer supporting the Harris campaign, and it came true when Beyoncé made an appearance and delivered a powerful speech.
The 23-time Grammy winner, putting aside her celebrity status, emphasized that she was not speaking as a celebrity or politician but as a mother.
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“I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said Friday night in Houston. “A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided.”
She continued, “Imagine our daughters growing up seeing what’s possible with no ceilings, no limitations. We must vote, and we need you.”
At the end of her speech, Beyoncé, joined onstage by her Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland, introduced Harris. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big, loud, Texas welcome to the next president of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris,” she said.
Unlike her performance at a rally for Hillary Clinton in Cleveland, this time, Beyoncé did not perform.
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Houston, Beyoncé’s hometown, has taken Harris’s campaign theme to heart, with her 2016 track “Freedom” from the iconic album Lemonade serving as an unofficial anthem for the campaign.
Harris first used the song in July at her campaign headquarters in Delaware. That same month, Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, publicly endorsed Harris for president. Beyoncé granted permission for the campaign to use the song, according to a campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.
“Freedom,” which appears in the second half of Lemonade, samples field recordings by John and Alan Lomax that document Jim Crow-era spirituals from Southern Black churches and work songs of Black prisoners from 1959 and 1948, respectively. It also features rapper Kendrick Lamar.
Kinitra D. Brooks, an academic and author of The Lemonade Reader, notes that “‘Freedom’ is so important because it shows that freedom isn’t free. The freedom to be yourself, the political freedom…it’s the idea that you must fight for freedom, and that it is winnable.”
The Harris rally in Houston highlighted the devastating health consequences resulting from Texas’ strict abortion ban, placing blame on Donald Trump.
Since abortion restrictions were enacted in Texas, the state has seen an increase in infant deaths, birth defects, and maternal mortality.
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Watch Beyoncé’s speech below.
