Picked As VP, Kamala Harris’ Molding In Black Institution Matters

Sen. Kamala Harris was selected by democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden as his vice presidential choice. (Photo Credit: Bloomberg).

In his magisterial study, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, John Hope Franklin noted that among the first things that the newly emancipated slaves focused upon during the Reconstruction Era was building churches and schools.

The churches and their proliferation — especially across the South — were natural outgrowths of what Princeton professor Albert Raboteau has called slave religion. Those churches, and eventually the multiple black denominations spawned by them, were organic expressions of a spiritually-inclined minority of Americans who had challenged the evils of human bondage and won through their faith in deity.

The crop of black schools, especially what we now call Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, came next. There was a veritable proliferation of them across the former slaves states, including colleges like Howard University — from which Vice President Joe Biden’s new running mate emerged three decades ago.

Senator Kamala Harris makes history with her journey from Howard to celebrated status as running mate to a man who would be president. It has never happened before, and is highly symbolic of yet another gradualist stride along the expansive racial spectrum in America.