P12 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020
“I’d like to see the country united, and I’d
like to see more conservative values.”
Burnett Ashley,68, St. Clair Shores, Mich.
“My hope is that we all come together and
there isn’t the toxicity; that somehow we
realize we have more in common than we
have different. I’ve been fortunate to live in
several different states throughout my life,
and the one common denominator is that
we’re all good people at heart — at least I
would hope so.”
Eric Zollinger,46, Houston“I want America to not see us as animals,
you feel me? I want everybody, when they
look at me — I don’t want them looking at
me just as a Black man. I want them to look
at me as an individual.”
Jairee Tannan,19, San Francisco“We have more hate in this country than
we need. I’d like to do my part to get rid
of some of that. But I don’t know where
to start.”
Ruth Dolash,89, Marshalltown, IowaBRITTANY GREESON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES TAMIR KALIFA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES GABRIELLA ANGOTTI-JONES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES KATHRYN GAMBLE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESAs Election Ends, Voters Look to the Future FROM PRECEDING PAGE
Election
ATLANTA — When Yolanda La-
timore, the owner of a Macon, Ga.,
advertising agency, makes a list of
those who showed her how to sur-
vive and thrive as a Black woman,
she begins with her 91-year-old
grandmother, Clarise Bonner, a
former sharecropper who lacked
a formal education yet ran a small
business while also raising a fam-
ily.
But on Saturday, Ms. Latimore,
46, was making room in her per-
sonal pantheon for Kamala Devi
Harris, the running mate of Presi-
dent-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Soon, Ms. Harris will become the
first woman — and the first Black
woman — to become vice presi-
dent of the United States.
At a time when a range of racial
and gender barriers have been
shattered by earlier trailblazers,
Ms. Latimore said that Ms. Har-
ris’s ascension to the highest lev-
els of power was particularly im-
portant, giving Black girls every-
where a reminder that anything is
possible.
“I know that it won’t solve all
problems, but it definitely will
raise the spirit and the drive of
Black women,” Ms. Latimore said,
adding that she was “just so glad
to see something like this hap-
pen.”
Along with the jubilance and
celebrations across the nation on
Saturday over the victory of the
Biden-Harris ticket, Ms. Harris’s
pathbreaking course prompted
explosions of joy within explo-
sions — of pride, elation, relief and
a sense of hard-fought accom-
plishment. The sentiment was
shared by women generally, and
Black women specifically.
“This has been a long time com-
ing — a woman of color, an
H.B.C.U. representative,” said
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of
Atlanta, who has known Ms. Har-
ris for about a decade, referring to
historically Black colleges and
universities; Ms. Harris graduat-
ed from Howard University, per-
haps the most vaunted of them.
Ms. Bottoms added that the
achievement was “particularly
poignant,” coming at the end of a
year that has included the con-
tinuing coronavirus pandemic,
the killing of George Floyd and
other Black men and women dur-
ing encounters with the police,
and a national reckoning over sys-
temic racism and police brutality.
“Communities of color have
been figuratively and physically
under attack,” she said. “I think
that representation is what this
country needs. It is more impor-
tant than ever that we have repre-
sentation at the White House, at
the table.”
Mayor London Breed of San
Francisco echoed that sentiment.
“It’s pretty incredible,” she said
on Saturday. “And I am so excited
not just because Kamala Harris is
my friend, but because of what she
represents for women in general
and what this means in terms of
our role in politics and how wom-
en — especially women of color —
are finally being taken seriously.”
The moment was also indelible
for those who have known Ms.
Harris, 56, for much of her life.
Hers is a life that began in the Bay
Area, as the child of immigrant ac-
ademics from India and Jamaica,
and included a high school experi-
ence in Montreal, Quebec; college
amid the fertile Black intellectual
loam of Howard, in Washington,
D.C.; and a long, complex political
career both on the West Coast and
in the Senate.
Carole Porter, a close friend
who hosted two fund-raisers for
Ms. Harris during the primary
race last year, lived around the
corner from Ms. Harris’s child-
hood home in Berkeley, Calif. The
girls — who first met at the neigh-
borhood bus stop — rode the bus
together each morning to a more
affluent area. In 1970, Ms. Harris
joined the second elementary
school class in Berkeley to be de-
segregated by busing.
To pass the time, they played
games like Miss Mary Mack and
cat’s cradle and sang Jackson 5
tunes. “We didn’t know that we
were in the middle of this social
moment,” said Ms. Porter, who re-
membered Ms. Harris as studiousand disciplined. “We just knew we
had to get up really early for
school and it was a long way from
home.”
By high school, they had lost
touch. They later reconnected
while Ms. Harris was a student at
Hastings College of the Law at the
University of California in San
Francisco.
Ms. Porter, now 56 and a health
care information technology team
leader who lives in Richmond,
Calif., learned that Ms. Harris had
officially become the vice presi-
dent-elect in a text from a mutual
friend. “It’s a wrap,” it read, in
part.
“I started to cry — I immedi-
ately thought of her mother, Shya-
mala,” Ms. Porter said, referring
to Shyamala Gopalan Harris, an
Indian immigrant who died of can-
cer in 2009. “I thought of the West
Berkeley flatlands, this small, im-
migrant, people of color, redlined
neighborhood we grew up in.”
“I thought of Shyamala going to
work as a researcher and denied
opportunities,” Ms. Porter said,but she “continued to fight.”
“Out of all of that,” Ms. Porter
continued, “we all rose, and Ka-
mala rose to become the vice pres-
ident of the United States. She
came from this fertile, activist en-
vironment. But the thing I want
people to understand is the work it
took to be where she is. She went
against the tide. She had people
who did not want her voice in the
room. She had people shutting the
door. And look where she is now.”
After the presidential race was
called, Carol Moseley Braun, 73,
the first African-American wom-
an elected to the U.S. Senate,
found herself making a mental list
of the Black women who had come
before Ms. Harris. They were
Black women who conquered
firsts: Sojourner Truth, Shirley
Chisholm, Yvonne Brathwaite
Burke, Barbara Jordan. Then, she
began to pray.
“I thanked the Lord for this
dream come true,” said Ms.
Braun, a Democrat who repre-
sented Illinois in the Senate from
1993 to 1999. “I believe Joe Biden
is exactly what the country needs
to heal, and Kamala as his second-
in-command is the exactly the
right person to help him. There
were so many women who paved
the way for this to happen, so
many who sacrificed, so many
shoulders.”
But after the celebration, she
said, Ms. Harris will face the diffi-
cult task of reaching across the
aisle in a country disrupted,
cleaved and often intolerant of the
changing America Ms. Harris em-
bodies: She is a daughter of immi-
grants, she is Black and South
Asian, and she is in an interracial
marriage. “She checks all theseboxes,” Ms. Braun said, and those
that want to fan the flames of rac-
ism and hate just do not know
what to do with her.”
The biggest challenge might be
the Senate.
“She is going to have to navi-
gate the cult of Donald Trump,
which remains in the Senate,” Ms.
Braun said. “The word ‘collegial-
ity’ no longer applies. It’s not even
something people aspire to. Joe
and Kamala have to heal the
wounds and make people on the
other side feel like they are being
heard.”In the produce section in
Ralph’s, a grocery store in Los An-
geles, Tracie Hunter, 46, reflected
on the significance of Ms. Harris’s
achievement.
“I’m very proud to be a Black
woman, very proud to witness this
important time in history given
the huge divide that we have in
our nation right now,” she said.
Ms. Hunter added that she was
“encouraged that we can continue
to have our little Black girls and
other girls of color feel encour-
aged like they can do whatever
they want to do and they can be
whatever they want to be.”
In Atlanta on Saturday, a cele-
bration was underway on Auburn
Avenue, the traditional and spiri-
tual heart of the city’s African-American community. It sits be-
neath a towering mural of John
Lewis, the pioneering civil rights
leader who represented Congress
for 33 years before his death in
July. Some rode up on bicycles and
toasted glasses of champagne.
Others broke into song.
“It’s opened so many doors for
so many little girls who feel like
they have been silenced or told
they couldn’t be who they are,”
said Nikema Williams, who has
been elected to succeed Mr. Lew-
is, as she stood in a parking lot be-
low the mural. “So as a Black
woman in politics, this means the
world.”
Of Mr. Lewis, Ms. Williams
said: “I know that he is some-
where doing a happy dance.”
Ms. Harris, like Ms. Williams, is
also a member of the Alpha Kappa
Alpha sorority. Soon, two dozen
other sorority members formed a
circle under the mural and burst
into one of their sorority’s signa-
ture songs:Hearts that are loyal
And hearts that are true
By merit and culture
We strive and we do
Things that are worthwhile...Charisma Deberry, a member
of the San Diego chapter of Alpha
Kappa Alpha, said Ms. Harris’s
victory “validates the American
dream for me.”
“Throughout my life, I’ve al-
ways been teased for being
‘bossy,’ assertive and ‘talking
white,’ ” Ms. Deberry said, “be-
cause I had big goals and vision
for my life. Today, I am proud to be
a bossy Black woman. Just like
the vice president of the United
States, Senator Kamala Harris.”BREAKING BARRIERS
‘A Long Time Coming’: Black Women Celebrate Harris’s Ascension
Women danced in Atlanta’s Freedom Park, above, and members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha soror-
ity celebrated in Harlem to mark the victory of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Saturday.
MERIDITH KOHUT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESGREGG VIGLIOTTI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESThis article is by Rick Rojas, Au-
dra D. S. Burch, Evan Nicole Brown
and Richard Fausset.
A mixture of pride,
elation, relief and
accomplishment.
Rick Rojas and Richard Fausset
reported from Atlanta, Audra D. S.
Burch from Wilton Manors, Fla.,
and Evan Nicole Brown from Los
Angeles.