President Biden sent shock waves through Washington by suddenly ending his campaign on Sunday and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy.
Influential Biden surrogates like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were concerned that eliminating Biden wouldn’t result in automatic donor support for Kamala Harris, a Black woman. But Harris’ entry into the race injected a shot of energy and money into what had become a demoralizing Democratic presidential campaign.
As many as 44,000 Black women joined a Win With Black Women Zoom call and, in just three hours, raised more than one million dollars for Harris. ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform, tweeted that 46.7 million dollars flowed into Kamala Harris’s campaign in 7 hours, making Sunday the “biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle.”
There are many issues Black women face, from challenges to reproductive freedoms to staggering student loan debt to aggressive policing that disrupts our families and community. So what would a Harris presidency mean for Black women?
Reproductive Rights
Harris has been a staunch advocate for reproductive rights. On the 51st anniversary of Roe earlier this year, Harris launched a multi-city tour in support of reproductive freedom. In her first stop on the tour in the swing state of Wisconsin, she explained in a CNN interview that Trump was proud of what he’d done to decimate women’s rights and much more was at stake if he was re-elected “By inference, he is proud that women have been deprived of fundamental freedoms to make decisions about their own body; by inference, proud that doctors are being penalized and criminalized for providing health care, proud that women are silently suffering because they don’t have access to the health care they need,” Harris added. “So, let’s understand that the stakes are so very high.”
Harris also touted measures the Biden administration had taken to protect reproductive freedom, including increased access to contraception for federal employees and increased the number of approved medications available for free under the Affordable Care Act, as reported by US News & World Report.
Alexis McGill Johnson, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, celebrated Harris as a champion for reproductive rights: “I’ve had the unique privilege of working and, more recently, campaigning with Vice President Kamala Harris, and I have been proud to watch her rise as one of the fiercest voices we have on sexual and reproductive rights.
“As a lawyer, an attorney general, a senator, a vice president, and as a Black woman — Vice President Harris understands what’s ahead of us. She knows what it means for Black women to have less reproductive freedom in a country where we are more vulnerable to everything from maternal mortality to criminalization, and she fights like it,” McGill said in a statement to ESSENCE.
Economic Policy
Harris is also a fighter when it comes to creating economic opportunity for low and middle-class families. For example, during her first presidential campaign, she proposed a tax credit of up to $6000 for married couples making less than $100,000, which would be paid for by rolling back tax cuts made by the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and taxing some financial institutions, as reported by PBS. Additionally, she’s promoted the Biden administration’s economic policies, which include the bipartisan infrastructure bill, funding for small businesses, capping the cost of insulin to $35, and limiting the amount of out-of-pocket expenses for prescriptions to $2000 for Medicare enrollees as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Plus, Harris has championed student loan forgiveness, which would have a significant impact on the Black community since Black people graduate with far more student loan debt than their white counterparts and take much longer to repay those debts, according to reporting by PBS.
Rose Pierre-Louis, Executive Director of NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research, said that this is a major moment that transcends politics and shows Black women and girls what’s possible. “This is a historic moment—not just in politics, but for Black women and girls across the nation. At the McSilver Institute, we support communities fortified by generations of Black women who have worked tirelessly to uplift and create opportunities for success despite enduring histories of oppression, violence, and neglect,’ Pierre-Louis told ESSENCE.” Vice President Harris embodies the countless years of individual and community effort in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. We have long assured Black girls that they can be the President of the United States one day. For the first time, we have a real opportunity to make good on that promise.”
Gun Control
Vice President Harris has been a vocal supporter of increased gun control, stemming back to her days as attorney general of California when she launched an initiative to confiscate weapons statewide from those illegally owning them. As a senator, she co-sponsored a bill to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines (those that can fire more than 10 rounds before reloading). And as part of the Biden administration she worked to enact the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), the most significant piece of gun control legislation in 30 years. Among its provisions, it includes funding for red flag law programs (this allows a judge to temporarily confiscate weapons from someone who is having a mental health crisis and appears to be a danger to himself or other people), expands mental health services access and expands community violence intervention programs. Vice President Harris has also taken the lead on the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which has closed the gun-show loophole by requiring all gun dealers to conduct background checks regardless of where they sell their merchandise.
Racial Justice And DEI
Harris was one of several senators who introduced the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act. As Essence reported, the bill would have ended qualified immunity for police officers, included de-escalation training for officers, created a national database for police misconduct, and more readily allowed the Justice Department to prosecute officers for civil rights violations.
Citing the disproportionate impact the criminal justice system has on Black people, Harris has also called for ending mandatory minimums, cash bail and the death penalty since the murder of George Floyd. But in her previous role as a prosecutor, she wasn’t always as progressive and once pushed for higher cash bails and refused to support independent investigations for police shootings as reported by the NY Times. When asked about her evolution, she said, “I was swimming against the current, and thankfully, the currents have changed; the winds are in our sails. And I’m riding that just like everybody else is — because it’s long overdue.”
Black women, the backbone of the Democratic party, are largely supporting Harris’ historic run, and Democratic leaders are falling in line. Not only have all 50 state Democratic party chairs thrown their support behind Harris, but previous Biden supporters like Bill and Hillary Clinton and James Clyburn (who famously revived Biden’s moribund campaign in 2020) have all endorsed VP Harris.
Bernice King, daughter of the late Dr. Martin Luther King and CEO of the King Center, also wholeheartedly supported Harris, posting on X: “We are in dire need of a President who ensures that the civil rights that my parents and many others so courageously work for to further the Beloved Community are not obliterated. For that reason, I deem this presidential election a legacy vote. We must protect our legacy of persistence for civil rights and deter efforts to roll back rights.”
She continued, “With these beliefs in mind, I support VP Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party and call on all my sorors of AKA, HBCU graduates, members of the Divine Nine and protectors of democracy to join me in getting this done”
That spirit of camaraderie and collectively having Harris’ proverbial back was echoed across social media. On Instagram, political strategist Alencia Johnson posted a picture of herself standing proudly next to VP Harris with the caption, “So we’re clear. The absolute only choice, and that’s Vice President Kamala Harris for President. Will do everything possible to ensure we inaugurate our first Black woman president.”
Even with enthusiasm from the Democratic base, though, Black women know all too well the sexist and racist attacks that VP Harris will face as the campaign progresses, but despite the challenges, women like Johnson think Harris can defeat Donald Trump.
“Hours after the announcement that she’s running, the energy from Black women voters is palpable. It means something that the backbone of the Democratic party is already in formation — ready to coalesce around the Vice President and keep her lifted for what will be a challenging, but winnable, fight ahead,” she said.
Now that VP Harris’ candidacy for President is nearly assured–with support extending from the grassroots all the way to the White House–the real work begins to defeat Donald Trump, ensure no element of Project 2025 comes to fruition and preserve and extend the rights that Black women have fought so hard for. From Shirley Chisholm’s “Unbought and Unbossed” campaign as the first Black woman to run for President in 1972 to Kamala Harris today, U.S. democracy owes a debt of gratitude to Black women’s efforts, let’s hope the rest of the nation joins us in the fight.