Residents of India, the Caribbean, and American women celebrate Vice President Kamala Harris in unique ways

Vice President Kamala Harris is causing quite a stir around the world as she is being celebrated on 3 continents because of her historic victory. Harris was sworn in on Wednesday, January 2o, as the first woman, first African American, first African American female, first black woman from the Caribbean and the first Southeast Asian/Indian to hold the second-highest office in the land. The events of January 6, where Trump supporters stormed the White House did not dampen the mood for those who wanted to bask in this historic moment in time.

In America, women were wearing "Chucks" ( Chuck Taylor Converse Allstars) and strings of pearls to honor the Harris/Biden win. Kamala Harris is a member of the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha whose founders were called the "Twenty pearls". Harris wore pearls in their honor when she graduated college and again when she was sworn in, to Congress. Now American women have returned the favor and are returning the honor. The new VP wore Chucks on the campaign trail and it was duly noted. Two Facebook groups had 90,000 and 450,000 people respectively who agreed to celebrate Harris by wearing the shoes and the jewelry.

The ancestral village where Vice President Kamala Harris's maternal grandfather was born over a century ago is also celebrating her win. Residents of Thulasendrapuram, India set off firecrackers and gave out calendars to villagers with Biden and Harris images on them. They also distributed food and sweets to honor the Inauguration of the 46th US President and his VP and a local politician offered prayers.

Kamala Harris was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, both of whom immigrated to the United States to attend college. The Vice President said she visited Thulasendrapuram when she was only five and can recall walking on the Chennai beach with her grandfather. Thulasendrapuram is a leafy village that is about 200 miles south of the city of Chennai.

Residents of the Caribbean the land of her father were also celebrating the Biden/Harris win. Politicians, artists, and other luminaries "from Antigua to Barbados to Jamaica" were acknowledging the historical achievement of Kamala Harris via virtual celebrations prior to the Inauguration on Wednesday. She was honored as “America’s first Black Caribbean-American” vice president. Caribbean activist, Felicia Persaud, who lives in Plantation said: “We’re here to celebrate,” “We’re here to remember. We’re here to hope. We’re here to resolve. And most of all, we’re here to dream.”

In Kingston Jamaica, the newspaper, the Gleaner reported that Norma Walters cried as she watched Kamala Harris being sworn in as Vice President. She has never met the new VP but a schoolmate of her father Donald Harris in Brown's Town, St Ann, in Jamaica. Gopalan Balachandran is the uncle of Kamala Harris and a senior defense scholar who lives in Delhi. His late sister, ( cancer researcher) was the mother of the VP. He said he was happy to hear Kamala mention her mom, during her speeches. Balachandran says he would like to come to America and see his niece in person, once he receives the COVID vaccine.

The parents of Kamala Harris were both immigrants who met in college. Her father is Donald J. Harris, a professor emeritus of economics from Stanford University. In 1961, Professor Harris arrived in the United States from British Jamaica for graduate study at UC Berkeley. he received a Ph.D. in economics in 1966. Shyamala Gopalan was the mother of Vice President Harris. In 1958 at age 19 she arrived in the United States from Tamil Nadu in India. Gopalan was a graduate student in nutrition and endocrinology at the UC Berkeley and received her PhD in 1964.