A Timeline Look at the Life and Accomplishments of Kamala Harris

Compiled by Fern Gillespie

1962: Kamala Harris’s parents met Kamala Devi Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a biologist from India who enrolled in graduate school in 1958 at the University of California, Berkeley to study endocrinology. Her father, P.V. Gopalan, was a senior diplomat in the Indian government. Shyamala’s medical research career spanned over 40 years leading to advances in breast cancer research.
Harris’s father, Donald J. Harris, is a Black Jamaican from Brown’s Town, in the Jamaican parish of St Ann. He met Shyamala while at Berkeley studying development economics. He was the first Black scholar to be granted tenure at Stanford University’s economics department.

1963: Kamala Harris’s parents married

1964: Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California and the family lived in at Berkeley,

1966: Kamala Harris’s sister Maya was born. The family moved to college towns in Wisconsin and Illinois where her parents held teaching or research positions

1970: Shyamala moved back to California with her two daughters

1971: Kamala Harris’s parents divorced when she was seven

1972: Donald Harris accepted a position at Stanford University. He lived in Palo Alto and Shyamala lived with her daughters in at Berkeley, where she was friends with African-American intellectuals and activists

1976: Shyamala moved her daughters to French-speaking Montreal, Quebec. She accepted a research position at the McGill University School of Medicine and a research position at Jewish General Hospital. Kamala would volunteer to help her mother in the lab by cleaning pipettes

1978: Attending Westmount High, an English-speaking public high school with wealthy white students and Black students that had immigrated from the Caribbean. In 11th grade, Harris discovered her best friend Wanda Kagan was being abused by her stepfather. She persuaded Wanda to live with the Harris family. That inspired Harris to be a prosecutor

1981: Harris attended Vanier College in Montreal

1982: Harris enrolled in HBCU Howard University. She was very active in the college community. She pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., joined the debate team, chaired the economics society. She was elected freshman class representative of the Liberal Arts Student Council, protested against apartheid in South Africa, interned at the Federal Trade Commission and had jobs at the National Archives and the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. In her sophomore year, she interned with Senator Alan Cranston of California, the same seat she would win more than 30 years later. Harris graduated with a degree in political science and economics.

1986: Harris attended the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. She served as president of its chapter of the Black Law Students Association, representing and advocating for Black law students on campus. She interned with the Alameda County District Attorney’s office.

1989: Harris graduated with a Juris Doctor degree

1990: Harris was hired as a Deputy District Attorney in Alameda County, California. She specialized in child sexual assault prosecutions. She mostly built cases against child molesters and rapists. Her conviction rate was over 90 percent,

1994: Harris’s profile was rising in the public. Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown, who she was dating, appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and California Medical Assistance Commission. Harris became a trustee of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she started a student-mentor program

1998: Harris left Alameda and became an Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco. She became the chief of the Career Criminal Division, supervising five other attorneys, where she prosecuted homicide, burglary, robbery, sexual assault and three-strike cases

2000: Harris took a job at San Francisco City Hall and headed the Family and Children’s Services Division, representing child abuse and neglect cases. Also.the controversial policy of prosecuting parents for children’s absence from school

2002: Harris ran for District Attorney of San Francisco. She won the election with 56 percent of the vote, becoming the first person of color elected district attorney of San Francisco.

2004: As District Attorney of San Francisco, Harris created the San Francisco Reentry Division. Over six years, the 200 people graduated from the program had a recidivism rate of less than 10 percent, compared to the 53 percent of California’s drug offenders who returned to prison within two years of release.

2005: Harris created an environmental crimes unit and expressed support for San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy of not inquiring about immigration status in the process of a criminal investigation. As part of an initiative to reduce the city’s homicide rate, Harris led a citywide effort to combat truancy for at-risk elementary school youth in San Francisco.

2007: Harris ran unopposed for a second term as District Attorney of San Francisco.

2008: Harris declared chronic truancy a matter of public safety and pointing out that the majority of prison inmates and homicide victims are dropouts or habitual truants. She issued citations against six parents whose children missed at least 50 days of school, She also pushed for higher bail for criminal defendants involved in gun-related crimes. Harris created a Hate Crimes Unit for LGBT children and teens in schools.

2011: Harris was elected Attorney General of California, the first woman, African American, and South Asian American to hold the office in the state’s history. Her tenure was marked by significant efforts in consumer protection, criminal justice reform, and privacy rights

2014: Harris was reelected with 58 percent of the vote. During her second term, she expanded her focus on consumer protection, securing major settlements against corporations. Homeowner Bill of Rights to combat aggressive foreclosure also worked on privacy rights. She collaborated with major tech companies he created the Privacy Enforcement and Protection Unit, focusing on cyber privacy and data breaches.

2014: Harris marries Douglas Emhoff, in Santa Barbara, California
As Attorney General of California, Harris was instrumental in advancing criminal justice reform. She launched the Division of Recidivism Reduction and Re-Entry and implemented the Back on Track LA program, which provided educational and job training opportunities for nonviolent offenders. Harris faced criticism for defending the state’s position in cases involving wrongful convictions and for her office’s stance on prison labor. She continued to advocate for progressive reforms, including banning the gay panic defense in California court and opposing Proposition 8, the state’s same-sex marriage ban.

2016: Harris is running for US Senator of California. In the November 2016 election, Harris won over 60 percent of the vote and became the second Black woman and first South Asian American senator in history.

2017: As a senator, Harris advocated stricter gun control laws, the DREAM Act, federal legalization of cannabis, and healthcare and taxation reforms. Harris spoke in opposition to Trump’s cabinet picks Betsy DeVos for secretary of education and Jeff Sessions for United States Attorney General

2017: As Senator, when Trump barred citizens from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days, she condemned the order and was one of many to call it a “Muslim ban”. She voted against the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. She questioned the firing of James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Harris called for the resignation of Senator Al Franken for sexual harassment and questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for favoring Norwegian immigrants over others.

2018: Harris was a target of the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts. Harris sponsored the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act, which would have made lynching a federal hate crime, but the bill died in the House. Harris supported busing for the desegregation of public schools and was an early co-sponsor of the Green New Deal.

2019: Harris was one of 34 Senate Democrats and independents to write a letter urging President Trump not to cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. She was part of a congressional group that wrote Barr acceded to pressure from the White House to investigate Trump’s political enemies.

2019: Harris said “voter suppression” prevented Democrats Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum from winning the 2018 gubernatorial elections in Georgia and Florida; In December, Harris led a group of Democratic senators and civil rights organizations in demanding the removal of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller after emails published by the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed frequent promotion of white nationalist literature to Breitbart website editors.
2019: Harris officially announced her candidacy for president of the United States in the 2020 presidential election. More than 20,000 people attended her campaign launch event in her hometown of Oakland, California

2019: During the first Democratic presidential debate, Harris scolded former Vice President Joe Biden for “hurtful” remarks he made, speaking fondly of senators who opposed integration efforts in the 1970s and working with them to oppose mandatory school bussing. Representative Tulsi Gabbard confronted Harris over her record as attorney general on blocking the DNA testing of a death row inmate, while others did not withstand scrutiny. Harris faced criticism from reformers for the tough-on-crime policies she pursued while she was California’s attorney general.

2019: In December Harris withdrew from the 2020 presidential election, citing a shortage of funds.In March 2020, she endorsed Joe Biden for president.

2020: Harris asked Senate Judiciary chairman Lindsey Graham to halt all judicial nominations during the impeachment trial, to which Graham acquiesced. Harris voted to convict Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Harris worked on bipartisan bills with Republican co-sponsors,

2020: In February 2020, Biden won a landslide victory in the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary with the endorsement of House whip Jim Clyburn and he suggested Biden choose a Black woman as a running mate. In late May, in relation to the murder of George Floyd and ensuing protests and demonstrations, Biden faced renewed calls to select a Black woman as his running mate

2020: In June, Biden announced he had chosen Harris as his Vice President running mate. She was the first African American, the first Indian American, and the third woman after Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin to be the VP presidential nominee on a major-party ticket.

2020: Harris is elected Vice President of the United States. Harris resigned from her seat on January 18, 2021

2021: Harris was sworn in as Vice President on January 20, 2021, by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She is the United States’ first woman vice president, first African-American vice president, and first Asian-American vice president

2021: When Harris took office the 117th Congress’s Senate was divided 50–50 between Republicans and Democrats;[193] this meant that she was often called upon to exercise her power to cast tie-breaking votes as president of the Senate American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 stimulus package Biden proposed, She cast 13 tie-breaking votes during her first year in office, the most tie-breaking votes in a single year in U.S. history.
Accomplishments as Vice President

Immigration – She coordinated public-private partnership Central America Forward to support the creation of local jobs and other measures in order to slow the flow of mass migration. It has generated more than $5.2 billion to support economic growth in Central America region. It represents financial services, textiles, apparel, agriculture, technology, telecommunications and nonprofit sectors

Voting rights – She pushed for Congress to pass the John R Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, but did not receive the 60 votes in the Senate

Gun violence – President Biden established the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention to reduce gun violence, overseen by Vice President Harris.

Maternal Health – In her previous role as U.S. Senator for California, Harris introduced the Maternal CARE Act and the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act. The vice president’s prior work on maternal and infant health care was a key component of the Build Back Better Act, passed in 2022. The legislation expands access to maternal care and makes new investments to drive down mortality and morbidity rates.
Broadband expansion –In 2023, Harris and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin to celebrate the announcement of new electronics equipment production made possible by the Biden-Harris

2024: In July, President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House and endorses Kamala Harris for the Democratic party nominee against former President Donald Trump

2024: In August, Harris accepts the Democrat Presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago

2024: In September, Harris has the presidential debate with Donald Trump

2024: Harris’s domestic platform supports national abortion protections, LGBTQ+ rights, stricter gun control, and limited legislation to address climate change. On immigration, she supports an earned pathway to citizenship and increases in border security, as well as addressing the root causes of illegal immigration
Resources: New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, AP, Reuters, Wikipedia