Kamala Harris: First African-American woman to receive US presidential nomination

US Vice President Kamala Harris made history on Thursday by accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for the White House, becoming the first African-American woman and the first person of South Asian descent to do so.

“On behalf of all those whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination to be president of the United States,” Harris said.

Her words were greeted with thunderous applause and shouts of joy by the thousands of people gathered at the United Center stadium in Chicago, where the Democratic National Convention was held this week, which reaches its climax today with the speech in which Harris officially becomes the party’s candidate.

When Harris looked up she could see hundreds of women dressed in white, the colour that united the suffragettes and with which they wanted to show that their protests were not aggressive, as well as symbolising purity, morality and legitimacy in their struggle.

Until now, only one woman had received the Democratic presidential nomination: Hillary Clinton, who in 2016 chose white to accept the nomination at the party convention held in Philadelphia.

Harris, dressed in dark blue, used her speech, broadcast live on the country’s main television networks, to tell her personal story, criticize Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, and explain her main political proposals.

The vice president became a candidate in an unusual way because, unlike previous nominees, she did not undergo a primary process.

The Democratic Party primaries were won by US President Joe Biden, who had no significant rivals, but on July 21 he announced that he was ending his presidential campaign after receiving pressure from his party for a disastrous performance in a televised debate against Trump.

Biden then called on the party to unite around Harris, and quickly a majority of the delegates who had been elected during the primary process gave her their support.

At the beginning of the month, they voted in favor of her candidacy in a virtual vote and on Tuesday, the second day of the convention, they endorsed her as the Democratic candidate. EFE