Just seeing one of our own, a sister of Howard, doesn’t get any better than this. Howard is magic. We make presidents and senators. We’re one-of-a-kind.”
- Alumnus Tedi Calloway (B.A. ’83, MBA ’93)
You don't need to be a member of any particular political party to objectively recognize the extraordinary competence and character of Kamala Harris (B.A. '86). Thrust into a role as her party’s nominee in the fourth quarter of the 2024 election cycle, one of the nation’s most competitive election cycles ever, she managed to run a remarkable campaign with little time to prepare or organize an infrastructure. Her ability to meet the moment— while demonstrating grace, compassion, intelligence, adaptability, and, yes, joy— showed the world how HBCUs like Howard University prepare its students to succeed in a society that has yet to fulfill the promise of equality and justice for all.
In 2017, a little more than three decades after Kamala Harris graduated from Howard University with a degree in political science, the Californian marked her return to the nation’s capital as she was sworn in as the state’s junior United States senator. For many, becoming one of 100 members of what has been called “the world’s most exclusive club” would be the culmination of a remarkable career. But for Harris, it was just the start of her trailblazing journey as a leader in the federal government. Over the next seven years, she would make history again and again. She was elected the first woman vice president in 2020, shattering that glass ceiling into 81,283,501 pieces, one piece for each vote she and Joe Biden received from coast to coast. Four years later, in a roller coaster electoral environment, she became the consensus Democratic candidate for president— the first woman of color and the first HBCU graduate to become the nominee of a major party in American history.
Courage is something Harris has in excess. As California’s attorney general, she put drug dealers and sex traffickers in jail and took on the country’s largest banks and most powerful corporate executives. As a U.S. senator, she held Supreme Court nominees and other officials accountable. As vice president, she presided over the passage of landmark legislation in the U.S. Senate that saved lives and steadied the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, set the nation on a positive course to combat climate change, and made investments in energy and infrastructure that span generations. She sat next to the president in the Situation Room as decisions were made regarding American action in the world’s most tension-filled military hotspots. From her days on Howard’s Liberal Arts Student Council to her role as the country’s most powerful woman, Harris has personified courage in leadership.
A presidential candidate’s highly visible affiliation with a college isn’t new. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously gave the Commencement address as a student at Wellesley College and President Gerald Ford had an often-mentioned football career as an MVP linebacker at the University of Michigan. President Bill Clinton made much of his education at Georgetown. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have more than their fair share of alumni who have sought and reached the highest office. It is hard to remember, however, a candidate who used their platform to uplift their alma mater as effectively as Kamala Harris did for Howard.
From the moment she returned to Washington as a U.S. senator, Harris has demonstrated her deep affection for and appreciation of the community that educated, nurtured and launched her on her path. She made a point of using Howard as a backdrop for some of her most important moments. She took CNN on a televised tour of campus. She delivered Howard’s 2017 Commencement address. After she declared her initial candidacy for the Democratic nomination in 2019, she held her first press conference in rented space at Howard. As vice president, she came to Howard to discuss economic empowerment and women’s rights. She tossed the coin at the 2023 Celebration Bowl featuring the Bison football team. And of course, she procured space to prepare for debates and speeches, and her presidential election night event, knowing that the eyes of the world would follow her to the Yard through the hundreds of reporters who covered her. It is equally apparent that Harris draws strength and inspiration from her Howard affinity and views the institution as a source of comfort and confidence, evidenced by the photo her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, tweeted of her watching the Democratic nomination process from a sofa— wearing a Howard sweatshirt.
Decades earlier, only Kamala Harris knows what was on her mind as she hitchhiked to her Commencement ceremony to mark her graduation from Howard, as she famously recounted with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show in 2019. Chances are, she wasn’t thinking that one day she would return to the campus she was preparing to leave, not just as an alumna, but as the 49th vice president of the United States and the highest-ranking American woman in the history of the world’s oldest democracy. But on Election Night 2024, her campaign rented space on The Yard for her watch party. Much of the world was fixated on the same Frederick Douglass Hall doorway she walked out of many times as a student studying political science, with many hoping she would walk out of it as the president-elect of the United States of America. It was the ultimate full-circle moment.
Global, national, and local media outlets stationed themselves inside and outside of the Armour J. Blackburn Center. National correspondents from CBS News Reporter and Bison Michelle Miller (B.A. ’89) to CNN reporter Abby Phillips, among others, flocked to the Yard for this unprecedented moment. On the Blackburn balcony, perched right above The Yard’s festivities, Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy hosted a special edition of their famed “Breakfast Club” radio show. Special guests also spotted on The Yard included Golden Globe-winner Don Cheadle, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, filmmaker Spike Lee, television, and activist Rev. Al Sharpton.
Win, lose, or draw to get to this point in 90 days, we are shocking America with this. She’s honoring herself and all who’ve come before her.”
Veteran White House correspondent April Ryan was on hand for Harris’ watch party. Taking in the essence of the Mecca, Ryan said the event is a testament to Howard’s role in culture. “This is not just [Harris], this is for those who fought and laid the groundwork for her to get here,” Ryan said.
“Nancy Pelosi said, ‘It’s not a glass ceiling, it’s a marble ceiling,’ and I agree with her,” Ryan continued. “You can shatter glass easy but with marble, you must chip away. Win, lose, or draw to get to this point in 90 days, we are shocking America with this. She’s honoring herself and all who’ve come before her.”
As guests waited for polls to close nationwide, The Yard’s grassy terrain transformed into a dance floor. DJ Noble and DJ Chubb E. Swagg spun generational classics like Frankie Beverly’s “Before I Let Go” and Cameo’s “Candy” as the crowd entertained themselves with line dances. “When we fight, we win” and “Kamala” chants filled in the remaining noise as a live crane camera showed guests dancing and celebrating from a bird’s eye view.
“Even before she announced she was going to come and celebrate here, I always planned to come to The Yard,” said alumnus Tedi Calloway (B.A. ’83, MBA ’93), who was on hand for the event. “She’s made history and that experience of a Bison, a Black woman— it doesn’t get better than that. Just seeing one of our own, a sister of Howard, doesn’t get any better than this. Howard is magic. We make presidents and senators. We’re one-of-a-kind.”
As the votes were counted late into the night, it became apparent that a Bison would not occupy the Oval Office just yet. But her run for the highest office in the land, and the poise, dexterity, acumen, and savvy she displayed, have inspired countless people across the planet. It is practically unfathomable to believe that someone ambitious enough to run for president would enjoy losing. So, it was undoubtedly a bitter pill for Harris to swallow when she did eventually emerge from Douglass Hall some 13 hours after the last polls closed, not to declare victory, but to concede the election with dignity and grace to former President Donald Trump.
Yet the bitterness of that moment did come with a sweet side. When she walked down the long runway which had been erected to allow her to dramatically walk to the vice-presidential podium on election night, she didn’t look out on a sea of strangers. She looked out at family. She wasn’t looking at the walls of a random hotel ballroom, the venue of choice for most election night events. She saw Childers Hall, the Blackburn Center, and Founders Hall. She could see Alpha Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., there to support her, and hear the boisterous encouragement from the thousands of Howard students who knew she had not won the race but wanted to show her love just the same.
She was home.
As she took the deep breath anyone would need before giving a tough speech, she inhaled the same crisp November air that she breathed as a student preparing for another tough challenge — fall semester final exams. She could take comfort in the fact that right there, in the same place where she had undoubtedly succeeded and failed, fallen and gotten back up, laughed and cried, right there, she was embraced by not just by volunteers and staffers, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and the children who call her “momala,” donors, and well-wishers. The was a collective embrace by a whole “herd” of those who shared with her the singular experience of walking the grounds of Howard University fully expecting to one day change the world for the better.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (L.L.D. ’57), said that “the ultimate measure of a person is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” As Harris looked out over the assembled masses and addressed millions more who would see her speech on television and streaming media, she radiated the strength and spirit of a true Bison, as one of the most recent contentious election cycles came to a close. Rather than emote about her own feelings and grievances, she stood alone on the stage and consoled those who believed in the cause for which she fought. She encouraged the nation to accept the results of the election. She asked her supporters to participate in a peaceful transition of power, to show neighbors kindness and respect, and above all, to treat every person with the dignity they deserve as human beings.
But perhaps most striking was the care she took to counsel the young people who she knew were looking to her for inspiration. While acknowledging their disappointment, she pushed them to never give up. Explaining that the fight for freedom is hard work, she implored them to never stop trying to make the world a better place.
Don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before. You have the capacity to do extraordinarily good in the world.”
“You have power,” Harris told them. “And don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before. You have the capacity to do extraordinarily good in the world.”
Chances are that much of the world missed the symbolism of Harris’s concluding remarks. She stood in front of the building where she honed the values that would drive her career of public service as she studied in an academic department founded by the first Black American to earn a doctorate in political science. Inside this historic edifice, Howard students will now study her. And through her final words, subtly but powerfully, she imparted upon millions the core tenant that defines Howard.
Let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion stars. The light, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.”
“There’s an adage a historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages,” she said in closing. “The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion stars. The light, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.”
“Of truth and service,” she said. Howard’s motto.
It was intended to be a penetrating, culminating close punctuated with an indirect allusion to the Howard mission. But subtlety is a difficult art inside a close family, as the Bison showed. Harris’ tacit tribute to the Howard legacy was not lost on the students who were there to show her their love, and they let her know. In the midst of what was otherwise a stolidly serious, even poignant moment, applause and cheers cascaded across the crowd. As she tried to end her speech with stately poise, she couldn’t help but to break into a smile and acknowledge with a laugh the unspoken bond between her and the students. It may have been opaque to most of the world, but it was obvious to the Howard family. In that moment, instead of following the eloquent, prepared script that had been crafted as a climax for the historical moment, she deviated and used a phrase heard on the Yard many times before.
As millions of viewers hung onto her final words, she paused and looked out at The Yard and used a very familiar refrain.
“H.U.!” she shouted.
The resounding response from the crowd was, “You know!”
There’s no place like home.
Article ID: 2291