Earlier this month, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a keynote address at Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.’s biennial convention in Dallas, where she urged her sisters and Black women, in general, to come out in their numbers and vote this November to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.
Little did she know that things would change mightily just days after her address. On Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election and endorsing Vice President Harris. The news followed weeks of mounting pressure for the president to step down, due to concerns and skepticism about his health and ability to govern the country for another four years.
If Harris becomes the Democratic nominee and defeats Republican candidate Donald Trump in November, she would not only be the first woman to serve as president but also the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to be president.
Her sorority listened when she appealed to them on July 10 this year at the Dallas convention to vote massively for her team, and now their support is going to be huge because they have their own running for president.
On Sunday night when the group “Win With Black Women” held their weekly call, Harris becoming the Democratic nominee was the center of their conversation. The women, mostly members of Harris’ sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) Sorority Inc., helped raise over $1 million for her campaign.
“There were 44,000 women on this call, that just shows you the power that we have, and it made you feel proud to be a part of the movement,” Shariah Dixon-Turner, the president of the Rho Theta Omega Chapter of AKA, told 6abc.com. “Once President Biden endorsed Harris the money started rolling in immediately,” Dixon-Turner said, adding that over $1 million came in in just under three hours.
Indeed, the AKA contributed over $200,000 to the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign, with each member donating exactly $19.08 to honor the year the sorority was founded.
The nation’s oldest black sorority, AKA was formed in 1908 by Ethel Hedgemon and eight other women at Howard who were of the view that college-educated Black women could represent “the highest –more education, more enlightenment, and more of everything that the great mass of Negroes never had,” CNN reported.
History shows that Black fraternities and sororities like AKA were formed in the 1900s when racism was rife and Blacks were excluded from predominantly white collegiate social organizations. Students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other higher education institutions then decided to create their own organizations focusing on mentorship, scholarship, community service and political advocacy, sisterhood and brotherhood, among other principles. Essentially, organizations like AKA were formed to provide a platform for Black students to come together to take part in social causes and activism while building lasting friendships and providing support.
When the nine women formed AKA, their objective was to be “Supreme in service to all mankind” and this has remained throughout the years amid the sorority’s expansion to some 300,000 women on college campuses across the country and several continents.
It is part of the Divine Nine – as the council of the nine historically Black fraternities and sororities is known, and its famous alumni include Maya Angelou, Coretta Scott King and Rosa Parks. Today, many members are executives, leaders and changemakers, entertainers, and sports personalities.
Harris joined the organization in 1986 during her days as a Howard University student working toward a career in public service. Her AKA chapter that year was made up of 38 Black young women who became known as the 38 Jewels of Iridescent.
Harris herself earned the name C3 — cool, calm and collected — thanks to her infectious laugh and demeanor, her line sisters said.
“As some of us were younger, we could get a little frazzled as we were given these tasks that were almost impossible to complete. She was the one who could kind of step back and reel us all in,” Lorri Saddler recounted.
From her first campaign where she ran to be freshman class representative of the Liberal Arts Student Council and won to when she pledged AKA in her senior year, Harris continued to serve. She joined some of her sisters in protesting Apartheid on the National Mall in Washington on weekends and started the “Stop Hunger Fast” to highlight global hunger.
In a 2018 interview on The Breakfast Club syndicated radio show, Harris said Howard helped shape her identity. “What you learn at an HBCU is you do not have to fit into someone’s limited perspective of what it means to be young, gifted and Black,” she said.
And as she continued to rise through public life, the AKA spirit of sisterhood enveloped her. In fact, during her history-making bid to the White House in 2020, she sometimes worked from an office at Howard. And now as Vice President, she is often at AKA events.
As sisters who have long rallied around her, from her rise to become the first woman to serve as California Attorney General, to her election as the first Black woman to represent California in the U.S. Senate and first woman vice president, they have begun mobilizing in masses to support their soror in the historic race for president.
Certainly, Harris, stepping in for Biden, has energized Black women, who have been Harris’ party’s most reliable voters over the years.
“As a Black woman, to see that she will potentially be the first Black woman nominee for the president of the United States — it’s not something that I thought I would see this soon,” Felicia Stanton Gray, president of AKA’s Theta Omega Chapter, told the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday.
“Our vice president’s journey underscores what the mission of our sorority is, our commitment to service and to leadership that we’ve championed over a century. She’s exemplary of that.”
