The Day That Changed The World: Kamala Harris Named Democratic National Party Vice Presidential Candidate

In spite of the reverential way she referred to her male colleagues – Douglass, Du Bois, Grimke,  and Crummell, in particular – her distinguished counterparts rarely returned the compliment in print.  Cooper’s relationship with Du Bois underscored how woman got left out of black political life.  She obviously knew and respected the eminent Dr. Du Bois.  She was one of the few black women to address the 1900 Pan-African Congress, which Du Bois helped to organize. 

By: Joseph Evans, Ph.D. – Reporting and writing from Washington D.C.

Changing Our Narrative

August 11, 2020 (which would have been my mother’s 92^nd birthday), is a symbol.  It’s the day the world changed. United States Senator Kamala Harris who represents the “Golden State” of California has been chosen to be the former Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s running mate.  In other words, Harris is the national Democratic Party’s Vice Presidential candidate.  This is historic. It is the day that the world changed.  In 2008, I remember standing in a long line in a coffee shop in Oxford, England. Because of the length of the line, I pacified myself by supposing that this was a sign that my drink of choice would be something special.  Indeed was my conversation with the only other person of African descent in the coffee shop.  

“Hello” she said, I grinned and responded, “Hello.”  She grinned back and asked me why I had such a big grin.  I told her. “As many times that I have been here [I meant to Oxford] “it is nice always to hear a black woman or man with a British accent.”  While in the line of people, waiting on our coffee, we chatted. She reminded me that black Brits were as amused by the differing American accents that they encounter from those of us who make it to England.  She determined that I was a southerner. I thanked her.  Then she began to speak loudly as though she wanted the self-described white Brits, those who pride themselves as possessors of stiff upper lips to hear our conversation.  To tell the truth, they were straining their ears to hear what the black man and woman was having conversation about (no different than in the States right?).  

She asked me, “Do you think Obama will win?” It was the summer of 2008. Then Senator Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois would soon engage in presidential debates with then Senator John Sydney McCain of Arizona. It’s amazing that she understood and employed both signification and me to give her voice. I caught it and I spoke louder than I had before and as intelligently as I could about the changing America.  I was confident; I told her that Senator Obama would be the next President of the United States of America. For the white Brits, I said, “Yes we will have an African American president before you have an English Prime Minister.” I wanted the woman who shared my coffee line to hear that I could use signification too; I suppose.  This was surface banter and the conversation’s plot thickened.       

She looked squarely at me and said, “I know something is different now, because my son – he sees Mr. Obama on the tele [television] and he stops and pays attention. [And] He even studies now.”  I said to her, “He sees himself; he sees who he can be. He is no longer invisible.” For a few more minutes, we stood and spoke while others looked cautiously toward us like we were a rare display of black humanity at the Oxford University Museum.  I think however for both of us, we saw ourselves differently too because Barak Obama, an American of African descent gave her and I and I suppose her son– hope.  But our plot thickens.

Today Kamala Harris has changed the world. I believe too that her personhood serves as a survey which surveys deeper into the fault lines and crevasses of the earth’s body politic and deeper than even Obama has surveyed so nobly.  Why you may ask? Because Harris is a woman – she is a black woman. She is a black American woman. She is a woman who matriculated and graduated from one of the leading universities in America – Howard University. She has legitimized the significance of the historically black colleges and universities (HBCU’S].  Senator Harris is a sign of redemption for countless Americans of African descent who studied, do study and will study under the careful eyes of the professors and stewardships of presidents and their cabinets.  She too is a symbol of infinite numbers of black girls and women across the diaspora and the international geographies of the world. 

However; Harris is not perfect. She has some explaining to do like Desi Arnaz said often as a punchline in I Love Lucy! Of course that was for comic relief. Attorney General Harris participated in what I characterized here as a tragi-comedy. It hurts so much you cry; it hurts so much you laugh. What she did was not fiction but reality. As California’s top cop, she seems to have been willing to advance her career politically by trading on black flesh – black male flesh. Harris complied with California’s racially biased over- policing policies that resulted in filling beds in the notorious state of California’s prison industrial complex.  As I said, she is not perfect. But she is on the ticket and she is a historic figure. As earlier said, today the world changed – at least symbolically. 

The opening epithet appears in Mary Helen Washington’s 1988 introduction to the reprinting of the original A Voice From the South.  The book was published in 1892.  The author was Anna J. Cooper.  Cooper became the first black woman in the nation’s capital to earn a doctor of philosophy degree, a prestigious diploma from the University of Paris (Sorbonne) in 1924.  What is more impressive, she was a delegate and a speaker during the first Pan-African Congress which convened in London, England in 1900.  As a pan Africanist, Cooper went on to make groundbreaking contributions to women’s causes and movements; for women of all hues and colors including white women.  Cooper throughout her life was an international voice but especially for the uplift of woman of African descent and globally.   Before Hillary decided to be an international women’s voice, there was Dr. Anna J. Cooper. 

So prior to Harris’ political accent there was Dr. Anna J. Cooper.  In short, the world changed today, August 8, 2020 but in real terms it changed unnoticeably a long time ago. Indeed more than a century ago. In 1897, Cooper was not invited to speak at the inaugural American Negro Academy, a prestigious gathering of many African American intellectuals.  Cooper was snubbed.  She made subtle notice of the oversight – which was gender bias among black men against a black woman.  Still she thrived and one could say that the world changed on the day that Anna J. Cooper made her steady and steely progression toward black gender equality among many opponents.  

Congratulations to Senator Kamala Harris, more than likely the next Vice President of the United States. Congratulations to HBCU’S and fraternities and sororities (especially Alpha Kappa Alpha).  Harris is qualified.  So was Anna J. Cooper, the groundbreaking iconoclast!  We celebrate that Anna J. Cooper made it possible for Kamala to change the world!   We celebrate Kamala Harris for being the woman – the black woman who changed the world on August 8, 2020!   I wonder what the black Brit in the coffee shop and now her young adult son think about this – there is Obama!  Now there is Kamala!