VP pick Kamala Harris, an AKA and HBCU grad, connects with Black community on many levels
State Rep. Sarah Anthony, a Democrat who represents Michigan's 68th House District, remembers being in the middle of a meeting when she glanced at her phone and saw a news alert that Biden had chosen Harris.
”I just started tearing up and asked the folks who were in the meeting just to please provide a little grace, because it is so historic,” she said.
Anthony, 36, and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, says she was supported "every step of the way" by her sorority sisters during her winning 2018 campaign for the Michigan House of Representatives.
She expects Harris will experience the same sisterhood on a much wider scale. "I can only imagine what that's going to look like at a national level," she said.
Anthony says the time is long overdue for a Black woman to reach the national ticket of a major party. She keeps a pop-art portrait of her hero, 1972 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Chisholm, in her office for inspiration.
"When she ran for president, the political winds, the environment, the culture, the stars just did not align. But the issues she was raising aren’t that much different than the ones that we’re grappling with right now."
