On the night Vice President-elect Kamala Harris made history, she recognized the long battle women had faced for the right to vote and to break into the highest ranks of American politics — and said that “every little girl watching” across the country now knows they can do so, too.
She said
Kamala Harris
Harris was the fourth woman to appear on a major political party’s presidential ticket, following Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, Republican No. 2 Sarah Palin in 2008 and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. She is the first to win.
Harris recognized a new generation of women who cast their ballots in 2020, and remembered her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who immigrated to the United States from India as a young woman.
“I’m thinking about her and about the generations of women — Black women, Asian, White, Latina and Native American women — throughout our nation’s history who have paved the way for this moment tonight,” she said. “Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality, liberty and justice for all, including the Black women, who are too often overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy.”