Washington:

As Kamala Harris heads into the November presidential race against Donald Trump, a social club she joined in college four decades ago might just pay its biggest dividends yet.

“Whatever it is that she needs our coalitions to do, we’re going to be there to help push it out and get it done,” said Tanya Baham, a member of Harris’s college sorority, in attendance at the recent Democratic National Convention.

Sororities and fraternities abound across US college campuses — with their Greek-letter names, exclusive memberships, and promise of community, usually along same-sex lines. 

But Harris’s membership in Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority, provides her campaign a direct line to a network of 360,000 women across the country, many of whom are excited to see one of their own in the White House.

And the Democratic Party, which counts women and Black voters as key constituencies in their electoral base, is paying attention.

While the sorority itself is non-partisan, many, like Baham, are ready to individually tap their networks for fundraising and voter registration in an election that could come down to the wire.

“We’re… going to make certain that our kiddos, the young folks, the old folks, get a chance to register and then get to the polls,” said Baham, a social worker in Louisiana.

Built-in network

Harris joined AKA at Howard University, a historically Black school in Washington where the sorority was founded in 1908 — the first such organization for Black undergraduate women in the United States.

Over the next few decades, more Black sororities and fraternities emerged, providing African American students refuge amid the scourge of American racism and also serving as bases for civil rights organizing.

AKA has chapters for both undergraduate students and college graduates, making it far more than just a college-level organization.

As vice president, Harris has hosted Black sorority and fraternity leaders at the White House, and ahead of rising to the top of the Democratic ticket she headlined AKA’s convention in Texas, in July.

Later that month, within days of President Joe Biden ending his reelection bid, she was at a convention for another Black sorority, Zeta Phi Beta, in Indiana.

AKA members were among those on a “Win With Black Women” Zoom call which raised $1.5 million, and Glenda Glover, the sorority’s former president, is leading outreach for Harris at the country’s historically Black colleges. 

In a historic first, AKA has also formed a political action committee, used for fundraising for political candidates. 

“We’re just all ready to work and do this,” Donna Miller, a county official in Illinois who was on the Zoom call, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It invigorated so many people from young and old, across generations, across ethnicity.”

Tight-lipped 

But while AKA and other Black sororities provide a network for Harris to tap into, it is hard to gauge how much that will translate into actual votes come November.

The sorority and its members have generally been tight-lipped — multiple members declined to speak with AFP about the election. 

Some referred AFP to the sorority’s headquarters, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A half dozen individual chapters also did not respond to requests for comment.

“Mobilization through sororities can’t hurt,” said Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. 

But Hopkins cautioned that “there are only so many voters in the US in general who attend four-year colleges, who are members of these organizations.”

And while African Americans are overwhelmingly Democratic voters, they have been peeling off from the party in recent years — a decline that has mostly come from younger and infrequent voters, according to his research.

At the same time, Amanda Wilkerson, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Central Florida who has studied Black voters, said organizations like Black sororities and fraternities are “hidden apparatuses,” often ignored by polling or the media even as they’ve organized for previous elections, both nationally and locally.

Their members and alumni are well-versed in campaigning, she said, and the 2024 election isn’t their first go-around.

Harris “is the first candidate of her kind to be able to leverage those networks of support,” Wilkerson said. “But it’s not altogether new.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on the phone with former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as the Obamas endorse Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate in this still image taken from a video released on July 26, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the vice president the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.

The endorsement, announced Friday morning in a video showing Harris accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple, comes as Harris continues to build momentum as the party’s likely nominee after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and endorse his second-in-command against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.

It also highlights the friendship and potentially historic link between the nation’s first Black president and the first woman, first Black woman and first person of Asian descent to serve as vice president, who is now vying to break those same barriers at the presidential rank.

“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” the former President told Harris, who is shown taking the call as she walks backstage at an event, trailed by a Secret Service agent.

Said Michelle Obama, “I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl, Kamala, I am proud of you.

“This is going to be historic,” she added.

Ms. Harris, who has known the Obamas since before his election in 2008, thanked them for their friendship and said she looks forward to “getting there, being on the road” with them in the three-month blitz before Election Day on Nov. 5.

“We’re gonna have some fun with this too, aren’t we?” Harris said.

The Obamas are perhaps the last major party figures to endorse Ms. Harris formally — a reflection of the former president’s desire to remain, at least publicly, a party elder operating above the fray. The Obamas remain prodigious fundraising draws and popular surrogates at large campaign events for Democratic candidates.

According to an Associated Press survey, Ms. Harris already has secured the public support of a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which begins Aug. 19 in Chicago. The Democratic National Committee expects to hold a virtual nominating vote that would, by Aug. 7, make Harris and a yet-to-be-named running mate the official Democratic ticket.

Mr. Biden endorsed Ms. Harris within an hour of announcing his decision last Sunday to end his campaign amid widespread concern about the 81-year-old president’s ability to defeat Trump. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed in the days after.

The Obamas, however, trod carefully as Ms. Harris secured the delegate commitments, made the rounds among core Democratic constituencies and raised more than $120 million. The public caution tracks how the former president handled the weeks between Mr. Biden’s debate debacle against Trump and the President’s eventual decision to end his campaign: Obama was a certain presence in the party’s maneuvers but he operated quietly.

Barack Obama’s initial statement after Mr. Biden’s announcement did not mention Ms. Harris. Instead, he spoke generically about coming up with a nominee to succeed Biden: “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” the former president wrote.

Both Obamas campaigned separately for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, including large rallies on the closing weekends before Election Day. They delivered key speeches at the Democrats’ convention in 2020, a virtual event because of the coronavirus pandemic. The former president’s speech was especially notable because he unveiled a full-throated attack on Trump as a threat to democracy, an argument that endures as part of Ms. Harris’ campaign.