The Truths We Hold

by Kamala Harris

  Three times a week, I would go up the street to Mrs. Jones’s house. She was a classically trained pianist, but there weren’t many options in the field for a black woman, so she became a piano teacher. And she was strict and serious. Every time I looked over at the clock to see how much time was left in the lesson, she would rap my knuckles with a ruler. Other nights, I would go over to Aunt Mary’s house, and Uncle Sherman and I would play chess. He was a great player, and he loved to talk to me about the bigger implications of the game: the idea of being strategic, of having a plan, of thinking things through multiple steps ahead, of predicting your opponent’s actions and adjusting yours to outmaneuver them. Every once in a while, he would let me win.

  On Sundays, our mother would send us off to the 23rd Avenue Church of God, piled with the other kids in the back of Mrs. Shelton’s station wagon. My earliest memories of the teachings of the Bible were of a loving God, a God who asked us to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” and to “defend the rights of the poor and needy.” This is where I learned that “faith” is a verb; I believe we must live our faith and show faith in action.

  Maya and I sang in the children’s choir, where my favorite hymn was “Fill My Cup, Lord.” I remember one Mother’s Day, we recited an ode to moms. Each of us posed as one of the letters in the word “mother.” I was cast as the letter T, and I stood there proudly, arms stretched out to both sides. “T is for the time she cares for me and loves me in every way.”

  My favorite night of the week was Thursday. On Thursdays, you could always find us in an unassuming beige building at the corner of what was then Grove Street and Derby. Once a mortuary, the building I knew was bursting with life, home to a pioneering black cultural center: Rainbow Sign.

  Rainbow Sign was a performance space, cinema, art gallery, dance studio, and more. It had a restaurant with a big kitchen, and somebody was always cooking up something delicious—smothered chicken, meatballs in gravy, candied yams, corn bread, peach cobbler. By day, you could take classes in dance and foreign languages, or workshops in theater and art. At night, there were screenings, lectures, and performances from some of the most prominent black thinkers and leaders of the day—musicians, painters, poets, writers, filmmakers, scholars, dancers, and politicians—men and women at the vanguard of American culture and critical thought.

  Rainbow Sign was the brainchild of visionary concert promoter Mary Ann Pollar, who started the center with ten other black women in September 1971. Its name was inspired by a verse from the black spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep”; the lyric “God gave Noah the rainbow sign; no more water, the fire next time . . .” was printed on the membership brochure. James Baldwin, of course, had memorably used this same verse for his book The Fire Next Time. Baldwin was a close friend of Pollar’s and a regular guest at the club.

  My mother, Maya, and I went to Rainbow Sign often. Everyone in the neighborhood knew us as “Shyamala and the girls.” We were a unit. A team. And when we’d show up, we were always greeted with big smiles and warm hugs. Rainbow Sign had a communal orientation and an inclusive vibe. It was a place designed to spread knowledge, awareness, and power. Its informal motto was “For the love of people.” Families with children were especially welcome at Rainbow Sign—an approach that reflected both the values and the vision of the women at its helm.

  Pollar once told a journalist, “Hidden under everything we do, the best entertainment we put on, there is always a message: Look about you. Think about this.” The center hosted a program specifically for kids through high school age, which included not only arts education but also a parallel version of the adult programming, in which young people could meet and interact directly with the center’s guest speakers and performers.

  The Bay Area was home to so many extraordinary black leaders and was bursting with black pride in some places. People had migrated there from all over the country. This meant that kids like me who spent time at Rainbow Sign were exposed to dozens of extraordinary men and women who showed us what we could become. In 1971, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm paid a visit while she was exploring a run for president. Talk about strength! “Unbought and Unbossed,” just as her campaign slogan promised. Alice Walker, who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple, did a reading at Rainbow Sign. So did Maya Angelou, the first black female bestselling author, thanks to her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Nina Simone performed at Rainbow Sign when I was seven years old. I would later learn that Warren Widener, Berkeley’s first black mayor, proclaimed March 31, 1972, Nina Simone Day to commemorate her two-day appearance.

  I loved the electric atmosphere at Rainbow Sign—the laughter, the food, the energy. I loved the powerful orations from the stage and the witty, sometimes unruly audience banter. It was where I learned that artistic expression, ambition, and intelligence were cool. It was where I came to understand that there is no better way to feed someone’s brain than by bringing together food, poetry, politics, music, dance, and art.

  It was also where I saw the logical extension of my mother’s daily lessons, where I could begin to imagine what my future might hold for me. My mother was raising us to believe that “It’s too hard!” was never an acceptable excuse; that being a good person meant standing for something larger than yourself; that success is measured in part by what you help others achieve and accomplish. She would tell us, “Fight systems in a way that causes them to be fairer, and don’t be limited by what has always been.” At Rainbow Sign, I’d see those values in action, those principles personified. It was a citizen’s upbringing, the only kind I knew, and one I assumed everyone else was experiencing, too.

  I was happy just where I was. But when I was in middle school, we had to leave. My mother was offered a unique opportunity in Montreal, teaching at McGill University and conducting research at the Jewish General Hospital. It was an exciting step in advancing her career.

  It was not, however, an exciting opportunity for me. I was twelve years old, and the thought of moving away from sunny California in February, in the middle of the school year, to a French-speaking foreign city covered in twelve feet of snow was distressing, to say the least. My mother tried to make it sound like an adventure, taking us to buy our first down jackets and mittens, as though we were going to be explorers of the great northern winter. But it was hard for me to see it that way. It was made worse when my mother told us that she wanted us to learn the language, so she was enrolling us in a neighborhood school for native French speakers, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges—Our Lady of the Snows.

  It was a difficult transition, since the only French I knew was from my ballet classes, where Madame Bovie, my ballet teacher, would shout, “Demi-plié, and up!” I used to joke that I felt like a duck, because all day long at our new school I’d be saying, “Quoi? Quoi? Quoi?” (“What? What? What?”)

  I was sure to take my upbringing with me to Montreal. One day, Maya and I held a demonstration in front of our building, protesting the fact that kids weren’t allowed to play soccer on the lawn. I’m happy to report that our demands were met.

  Eventually I convinced my mother to let me switch to a fine arts school, where I tried out violin, French horn, and kettle drum alongside my studies in history and math. One year, we performed “Free to Be . . . You and Me” from start to finish.

  By the time I got to high school, I had adjusted to our new surroundings. I still missed home, my friends and family, and was always so happy to return during the summer and holidays, when we’d stay with my father or Mrs. Shelton. But I’d gotten used to most of it. What I hadn’t gotten used to was the feeling of being homesick for my country. I felt this constant sense of yearning to be back home.There was no question in my mind I’d return home for college.

  I invited both of my parents to come to my graduation, even though I knew they wouldn’t speak to each other. I still wanted them both to be there for me. I’ll never forget sitting in the
first couple of rows of the auditorium, looking out at the audience. My mother was nowhere to be found. “Where is she?” I thought. “Is she not here because my father is?” We were about to get started. And then, all of a sudden, the back door of the auditorium opened and my mother—who, most days, wore jeans and tennis shoes to her lab—walked in wearing a very bright red dress and heels. She was never one to let the situation get the better of her.

  During high school, I started thinking more concretely about my future—college and beyond. I’d always assumed I would have a career; I’d seen the satisfaction my parents derived from their work. I’d also seen a series of extraordinary women—Aunt Mary, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Shelton, and my mother most of all—leading in their respective fields of influence, and the difference they were making in others’ lives.

  Though the seed was planted very early on, I’m not sure when, exactly, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. Some of my greatest heroes were lawyers: Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, Constance Baker Motley—giants of the civil rights movement. I cared a lot about fairness, and I saw the law as a tool that can help make things fair. But I think what most drew me to the profession was the way people around me trusted and relied on lawyers. Uncle Sherman and our close friend Henry were lawyers, and any time someone had a problem, within the family or the neighborhood, the first thing you’d hear was “Call Henry. Call Sherman. They’ll know what to do. They’ll know how to make sense of this.” I wanted to be able to do that. I wanted to be the one people called. I wanted to be the one who could help.

  So when it came to college, I wanted to get off on the right foot. And what better place to do that, I thought, than at Thurgood Marshall’s alma mater?

  * * *

  • • •

  I had always heard stories about what a wonderful place Howard University was, especially from Aunt Chris, who had gone there. Howard is an institution with an extraordinary legacy, one that has endured and thrived since its founding, two years after the Civil War. It endured when the doors of higher education were largely closed to black students. It endured when segregation and discrimination were the law of the land. It endured when few recognized the potential and capacity of young black men and women to be leaders. Generations of students had been nurtured and edified at Howard, equipped with the confidence to aim high and the tools to make the climb. I wanted to be one of them—and in the fall of 1982, I moved into Eton Towers, my first college dorm.

  I’ll always remember walking into Cramton Auditorium for my freshman orientation. The room was packed. I stood in the back, looked around, and thought, “This is heaven!” There were hundreds of people, and everyone looked like me. Some were children of Howard alumni; others were the first in their families to go to college. Some had been in predominantly black schools their whole lives; others had long been one of only a few people of color in their classroom or their neighborhood. Some came from cities, some from rural communities, and some from African countries, the Caribbean, and throughout the African diaspora.

  As was the case for most Howard students, my favorite place to hang out was an area we called the Yard, a grass-covered space the size of a city block, right smack in the heart of the campus. On any given day, you could stand in the middle of the Yard and see, on your right, young dancers practicing their steps or musicians playing instruments. Look to your left and there were briefcase-toting students strolling out of the business school, and medical students in their white coats, heading back to the lab. Groups of students might be in a circle of laughter, or locked in deep discussion. A columnist for The Hilltop, the school newspaper, with the star of the football team. A gospel choir singer with the president of the math club.

  That was the beauty of Howard. Every signal told students that we could be anything—that we were young, gifted, and black, and we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our success. The campus was a place where you didn’t have to be confined to the box of another person’s choosing. At Howard, you could come as you were and leave as the person you aspired to be. There were no false choices.

  We weren’t just told we had the capacity to be great; we were challenged to live up to that potential. There was an expectation that we would cultivate and use our talents to take on roles of leadership and have an impact on other people, on our country, and maybe even on the world.

  I dove in with gusto. Freshman year, I ran for my first elected office: freshman class representative of the Liberal Arts Student Council. It was my very first campaign. No opponent I’ve faced since was as tough as Jersey Girl Shelley Young, and that says a lot, coming from a person from Oakland.

  I chaired the economics society and competed on the debate team. I pledged a sorority, my beloved Alpha Kappa Alpha, founded by nine women at Howard more than a century ago. On Fridays, my friends and I would dress up in our best clothes and peacock around the Yard. On weekends, we went down to the National Mall to protest apartheid in South Africa.

  While at Howard, in addition to being a student, I had many jobs. I interned at the Federal Trade Commission, where I was responsible for “clips,” which meant combing all the morning newspapers, cutting out any articles that mentioned the agency, and pasting them onto sheets of paper to copy and distribute to senior staff. I also did research in the National Archives and was a tour guide at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. My fellow tour guides and I were all given walkie-talkies and ID numbers; I was “TG-10,” a code name that made me feel like a Secret Service agent. Once, I emerged from my shift to find Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis in the main area, waiting for a VIP tour after hours. They projected an aura like the luminaries they were, yet they made a special point of engaging me in conversation and telling me that it made them proud to see me as a young black woman working in public service. I’ve never forgotten how it made me feel as a young person to have these two icons, both larger than life, take the time to show an interest in me.

  In the summer of my sophomore year, I got an internship with Senator Alan Cranston of California. Who could have known that some thirty years later, I would be elected to the same Senate seat? (I still have, framed, the thank-you letter from his office manager, which hangs in my Senate office near where my own interns sit. When I find myself riding the Senate subway with interns, I often tell them, “You’re looking at your future!”) I loved going to the Capitol Building every day that summer for work. It felt like the epicenter of change—and even as an intern sorting mail, I was thrilled to be a part of it. But I was even more mesmerized by the Supreme Court Building, across the street. I would walk across the street in the hot, humid summer, when you could cut the air with a butter knife, just so I could stand in awe of its magnificence and read the words engraved in marble above its entrance: EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW. I imagined a world where that might be.

  After Howard, I returned home to Oakland and enrolled at UC Hastings College of the Law. I was elected president of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) during my second year in law school. At the time, black students were having a harder time finding employment than white students, and I wanted to change that. As BLSA president, I called the managing partners of all the major law firms and asked them to send representatives to a job fair we were hosting at a hotel.

  When I realized that I wanted to work in the district attorney’s office—that I had found my calling—I was excited to share the decision with my friends and family. And I wasn’t surprised to find them incredulous. I had to defend my choice as one would a thesis.

  America has a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice. I knew this history well—of innocent men framed, of charges brought against people of color without sufficient evidence, of prosecutors hiding information that would exonerate defendants, of the disproportionate application of the law. I grew up with these stories—so I understood my community’s wariness. But history told another story, too.


  I knew the history of brave prosecutors who went after the Ku Klux Klan in the South. I knew the stories of prosecutors who went after corrupt politicians and corporate polluters. I knew the legacy of Robert Kennedy, who, as U.S. attorney general, sent Department of Justice officials to protect the Freedom Riders in 1961, and sent the U.S. Marshals to protect James Meredith when he enrolled at Ole Miss the next year.

  I knew quite well that equal justice was an aspiration. I knew that the force of the law was applied unevenly, sometimes by design. But I also knew that what was wrong with the system didn’t need to be an immutable fact. And I wanted to be part of changing that.

  One of my mother’s favorite sayings was “Don’t let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.” And so I did. I knew part of making change was what I’d seen all my life, surrounded by adults shouting and marching and demanding justice from the outside. But I also knew there was an important role on the inside, sitting at the table where the decisions were being made. When activists came marching and banging on the doors, I wanted to be on the other side to let them in.

  I was going to be a prosecutor in my own image. I was going to do the job through the lens of my own experiences and perspectives, from wisdom gained at my mother’s knee, in Rainbow Sign’s hall, and on the Howard Yard.

  An important part of what that wisdom told me was that when it came to criminal justice, we were being asked to accept false choices. For too long, we’d been told there were only two options: to be either tough on crime or soft on crime—an oversimplification that ignored the realities of public safety. You can want the police to stop crime in your neighborhood and also want them to stop using excessive force. You can want them to hunt down a killer on your streets and also want them to stop using racial profiling. You can believe in the need for consequence and accountability, especially for serious criminals, and also oppose unjust incarceration. I believed it was essential to weave all these varied strands together.