When AmericAns elected KAmAlA hArris
Vice President, they symbolically completed a 150-
year project of recognizing the right of Black people
to exercise the full franchise as citizens. In 1870, the
15th Amendment gave African-American men the
right to vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment secured
the franchise for women. We commemorated both of
these milestones this year, even as scholars acknowl-
edged the ways African-American women were over-
looked and, because of extreme racial repression, did
not get to vote in significant numbers until the pas-
sage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We also marked
the battle to expand the franchise under the shadow
of a massive voter- suppression campaign undertaken
by conservative politicians and the current President.
Stacey Abrams’ 2018 gubernatorial loss in Georgia in-
dicated that the only way to overcome all attempts to
undermine Black people’s voting power was to vote
in overwhelming numbers, and so in order to deliver
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to victory, Black people
did just that. As Harris ascends to the No. 2 role in
this country, her presence offers us a chance to write a
new chapter in our nation’s history, or perhaps simply
to complete an old one.
Americans like to celebrate progressive victories
by swiftly forgetting past failures. Let us not forget
the eight years that we spent touting a narrative of
being “post racial.” But part of what it means to have
Black people in high office—or what it should mean—
is a willingness to reckon with the damn near intrac-
table barriers that made it take so long to get there.
The first Black woman to express an aspiration to be
Vice President was suffragist and socialite Charlotte
Rollin, who joked that she would be a great VP pick in
- Harris is the fulfillment of a dream that Rollin
could only facetiously entertain, a dream that eluded
Charlotta Bass, the first Black woman to run for Vice
President, in 1952.
Black women leaders are so important to this
democracy precisely because they dare to keep
dreaming, even after the immediacy of a perpetual
>
Harris delivers her victory speech in
Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 7
MAKING HER
ROLE COUNT
Kamala Harris’ ascension to the vice
presidency cannot be merely symbolic
BY BRITTNEY COOPER
VIEWPOINT
ELECTION
2020
PHOTOGRAPH BY DREW ANGERER
