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March 31, 2021
“Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the listening skies.
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.”
“Lift Every Voice and Sing”— James Weldon Johnson
“Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.”
“Redemption Song”– Bob Marley
VP Kamala Harris graduated from Howard University in 1986.
There’s a lot to celebrate! Despite the gloom and doom brought on by COVID-19, Kamala Harris gives us renewed hope that the Biden-Harris administration is committed to using a science-based model to address the pandemic. The Vice President also personifies that hard work, determination, and unwavering confidence can result in one’s wildest dreams becoming real. Kamala Harris is more than a token, symbol, or aberration. She is confirmation that being Black or Indian or a woman and rising to the second-highest office in this land is possible.
Kamala Harris, as Vice President, is the total of all the wisdom, mentorship, and perhaps guidance from ancestors who catapulted her to being one of the most powerful women in America. But ascending to the summit, hand on Bible to uphold the Constitution, in a racist and sexist society should be respected as we cherish the VP’s grace.
How did Harris convince herself that she was worthy? How could she entice people to see past her color and gender and see her talents and strengths? Many touchstones: Her immigrant parents, from India and Jamaica, were highly accomplished. She was bused to a more affluent school outside her neighborhood and was taunted for being Black. But I would wager that Howard University was the capstone. Capstone is the Howard University Newsletter to keep students, staff, and alumni abreast of updates and events impacting the Howard diaspora.
“At the Justice Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings… her head would sway, her finger would point as if the questions would reveal the truth more than the answers.”
I should know because, in 1997, my Trinidadian and Jamaican parents packed up my younger brother–who later attended Howard U.–and me in their SUV traversing Brooklyn to D.C. bound for Howard University. As I fantasized about Howard’s illustrious legacy, we listened to an eclectic soundtrack ranging from Mighty Sparrow to Toni Braxton. I was a wide-eyed freshman fully aware after the Howard orientation that we were on “The Yard.” A campus where: Thurgood Marshall, trailblazing lawyer and first Black on the US Supreme Court; Dr. Cheddi Jagan, British Guyana’s first Chief Minister (1953), first Premier (1961-1964); Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) Trinidad-born political activist and Black Power Advocate; and the distinguished Ossie Davis, among others, also walked to class as they fine-tuned protest strategies while envisioning and actively engaging in activities to transform the world into a more just and equitable space.
I figured out that Howard University is to Black people what the Statue of Liberty was supposed to be for immigrants, providing a space for those yearning to breathe free, be welcomed, nurtured, and affirmed. As we Bison (the affectionate term for Howard students and alumni) researched and attended classes about the African Diaspora, we both marveled at the history we were never taught elsewhere and the authorized history of oppression traditionally used to suppress and silence us.
Poet and chemist, Jeandele Elliot, Howard University, Class of 2021.
We had been in the bottomless pit, but Howard functioned as redeemer. I met people from all over the African Diaspora: From Liberia to Georgia; The Netherlands and The Bronx; Jamaica and Ghana; Compton and Milwaukee; we came to shed our miseducation intellectually stimulated, thus becoming change agents wherever we went.
Our professors, advisors, resident assistants, and the kitchen and custodial staff saw us as the future. Future leaders, researchers, artists, engineers, philosophers, presidents, and so much more. Regardless of one’s majors, professors stressed discipline and self–pride while fostering a critical and creative disposition within us. Bison were tasked with being innovators, educating the world about the infinite potential of Black people; past, present, and future.
Melissa Douglas, 2020 HU graduate.
Howard is no stranger to high profile individuals such as Archie Alexander, former Governor of The U.S. Virgin Islands; Wart Brown, former Premier of Bermuda; Dr. Lamuel A. Stanislaus, who served as Permanent Representative of Grenada to the UN and was in renowned historian, Dr. Eric Williams class when he taught at HU in the late 1940s. Plus, many other note individuals, such as Dr. David Curwen, a renowned Grenadian physician in Tennessee; Dr. Wayne A. Frederick, Howard’s current president who hails from Trinidad and Tobago; in addition to the numerous dentists and physicians who graduated from Howard U.
The VP’s alma mater remains a place where students thrive. Among the many female graduates in the Class of 2020 were Jamaican Melissa Douglas, a mechanical engineer, and an Antiguan, Danique Nailah Jordan, an architect. And, in 2008, in another mark of excellence, Dr. Zelia Yanique Archibald from St. Kitts-Nevis graduated from Howard University College of Medicine in her mid-twenties.
As a pre-teen growing up in the ’90s during the Crown Heights riots–a struggle for fair and equitable treatment of Blacks in Brooklyn–little did I know that NY’s Mayor Dinkins, who presided with poise and dignity, gleaned his leadership chops at Howard University. But I also argue that Howard graduates’ wisdom floods every body of water with the knowledge to quench our thirst worldwide. HU forever!
And then there is Kamala. I remember being extremely impressed by a woman who drilled into those testifying at the Justice Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Her head would sway, her finger would point as if the questions would reveal the truth more than the answers.
Kamala represented. The, then, senator exposed those who should and should not win the hearts and minds of the American people, much less a seat on the Supreme Court. From that confirmation hearing to the first Impeachment Trial of the last president, it became clear that Kamala was well suited for as grand a stage as VP and beyond.
Kamala is a natural-born leader as she transmuted all of her adversity into policy. The new VP is the American Dream personified–bold, determined, and resolute. Kamala is!
Many people can relate because she is; an AKA, Indian, Black, Jamaican, and a Bison. When you stand on Howard’s campus, it is sacred ground. For over 150 years, Howard University has been fertile land and will continue to harvest for generations to come.
*A different version of this article was published in Everybody’s February/March 2021.
Kanene A. Holder, Howard University Class of 2001, has written for HuffPost, Everybody’s, Black Book Review, among others. Holder has produced shows about race relations at The Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub and served as Art Department Chair at Broome Street Academy, a high school for LGBTQA youth, and a theater teacher at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Currently, she is a Diversity Consultant @Jennifer Brown Consulting.