'We are in overdrive': Black sorority members mobilize for sister Kamala Harris

By Jonathan D. Salant / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

WASHINGTON — When they debated last month, Donald Trump accused Kamala Harris of missing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress so she could attend “a sorority party of hers.”

True, Ms. Harris was in Indianapolis rather than at the U.S. Capitol, but to call the event a sorority party is like referring to Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington as a hill. 

What she did on July 24 was join thousands of Black women in Indianapolis at the biennial gathering — known as a boulé  — of one of the four historically Black sororities. For the first time, the Democratic nominee is a fellow sorority sister, and that has birthed an army of volunteers that no other presidential candidate has ever had.

“We have been at the forefront of social justice since our inception,” said U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Ga., who like Ms. Harris is a member of the oldest of the historically Black sororities, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., formed in 1908, “We’ve always been involved on the advocacy side, making sure that we can register voters and turn them out. But there is nothing like having one of your own at the top of the ticket.  .”

Ms. Harris and Ms. Williams were among those attending AKA’s boulé in Dallas on July 10.

“The lines to get in were down the street,” Ms. Williams recalled about the boulé, attended by 20,000 people. “People were waiting to get in. Usually you might get people who decide to skip a couple of the main plenary sessions. But they didn’t skip it for Vice President Harris. She came to spend time with her sorority.”

Two weeks later, Ms. Harris was off to Indianapolis to meet with members of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc. at their national convention. That’s the appearance Trump criticized during the debate.

Along with five historically Black fraternities, the four Black sororities comprise what is known as the Divine 9, which count more than 2.5 million African Americans who donate their time to helping their communities, fighting for civil rights, raising money for scholarships, and making sure Americans register to vote and cast ballots on Election Day.

The sororities themselves do not get involved in campaigns, though their members and their brethren from the fraternities regularly work to get people to vote.

"This year is an exceptional year, but it does not differ from our efforts from years past," said Valerie McDonald Roberts, the connection and social action committee chair at the Pittsburgh graduate chapter of AKA.

They’re also out in force for one of their own this year — Ms. Harris, the first Black and first South Asian woman nominated for president by a major political party and a member of AKA since her days as a student at Howard University.

‘A ready-made coalition’

“It’s like a ready-made coalition that has been there for her,” said Kuae Noel Kelch, a senior vice president at the public affairs firm Mercury and a Philadelphia native initiated into the Howard AKA sorority chapter alongside Harris. “We are working hard for her. We are raising money, we are getting out the vote, we are hosting bus rides, we are canvassing in neighborhoods, we are lifting her up in every way we can. This is unprecedented. and it is extremely powerful.”

This volunteer army may provide an especially potent advantage for Ms. Harris this fall, considering that the outcome of the 2024 election will depend on which side’s supporters get to the polls. 

“We mobilize every single election,” said Zeta Phi Beta member Wyquasia King-Thomas of Peekskill, N.Y., who runs several small businesses and works as a consultant. “That is one of our biggest, biggest moments, getting out there getting people to vote. Now it's one of our own. It's one of our sisters."

Black women are the most loyal of Democratic constituencies. When Democrat Doug Jones won a special election in Alabama for the U.S. Senate in 2017, 98% of Black women backed him, according to NBC News exit polls.

Seven in 10 Black voters expressed a positive view of Ms. Harris in a recent  poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, while eight in 10 expressed negative views about former president Trump. 

Still, during a visit to a Pittsburgh campaign headquarters for Ms. Harris on Thursday, former president Barack Obama expressed concern that some Black men weren’t as excited about her candidacy as they should be and may be backing Trump instead.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you're coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” he said. “When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting. And now, you’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.”

Separate from the voter registration drives, sorority members talk up the candidacy of Ms. Harris through social media and conversations in their communities.

“They bring numbers, they bring financial resources, they bring encouragement, they bring teaching to the younger generation,” said another AKA member, U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., about her sorority sisters.

As for Trump, during his presidency, he signed bipartisan legislation providing more than $250 million a year to historically black colleges and universities and other institutions attended by large numbers of minority students, and his Education Department forgave $322 million in loans to four historically Black colleges and universities that suffered hurricane damage.

“These institutions are a vital part of our country’s future, and he is committed to keeping them strong, keeping them funded, and making sure they continue to succeed — and President Trump's record of putting his money where his mouth is on supporting Black Americans and Black institutions, and that is why everyday Black Americans are going to support him in historic numbers come November,” said the Trump campaign’s Black media director, Janiyah Thomas.

‘38 Jewels’

Ms. Harris and Ms. Kelch were two of 38 women initiated into Alpha chapter, the first chapter of AKA, in the spring of 1986. Their line was known as the “38 Jewels of Iridescent Splendor” and Ms. Harris referred to them as “such an incredible part of my journey” when she addressed the sorority’s national convention in July.

Some of her sorority sisters have helped organize what Ms. Kelch called “Bison Freedom Rides” — bus trips to battleground states to make sure residents register to vote, including from Maryland to Pennsylvania. The Bison is the mascot of Howard University.

“We are showing up,” she said. “We are filling buses. We are going to barber shops and beauty shops and we are canvassing.”

In addition, AKA formed a political action committee in August to raise and make campaign contributions.

AKA is not the only sorority whose members are lining up behind Ms. Harris. Pennsylvania state Rep. Gina Curry, a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., described their actions as “step, stop and stroll.”

“We’re all coming together, the fraternities, the sororities, to support Kamala Harris,” said Ms. Curry, a Democrat from Delaware County. “All of us are about social action. This is critical for the young sorors [sorority sisters] who are coming up, who want to do this work, and the sorors who have been sorors forever who are in their 70s, 80s and 90s.”

The sororities encompass generations of Black women. Ms. Harris said her aunt preceded her into AKA. Ms. Kelch said her mother, aunt, sister, and daughter all are AKA members.

“To see our line sister ascend to the highest office in the land is an acknowledgment of our dreams and our parents’ dreams and our ancestors’ dreams,” Ms. Kelch said. “I ask myself often, ‘Is this really true, and this is our ancestors’ wildest dreams coming through?’”

Members of the Divine 9 sororities and fraternities continue their involvement long after they’ve donned their caps and gowns and received their diplomas.

“It’s a lifetime commitment,” Ms. King-Thomas said. “You hear people all the time saying, ‘I was a member of such and such sorority when I was in college.’ The work begins in college. It’s nowhere near finished.”

Ms. Kelch, whose parents joined the 1963 March on Washington, remembered when she first met Ms. Harris at Howard.

“We were the first generation to come of age after the end of legal segregation,” she said. “We had the same hopes and dreams of our parents and we had a mandate in our own minds that we had to continue the fight. …Part of my mandate was to continue to carry the torch.”

Ms. Harris’ line name was C3, or C Cubed, for “calm, cool and collected,” Ms. Kelch recalled. She said Ms. Harris never was frazzled like some of her sorority sisters as they scrambled to plan activities, raise money for important causes, learn the history of their sorority and engage in other undertakings.

“She always had a command of what needed to be done and she got it done,” Ms. Kelch said. “But she got it done so coolly. She always had an air of coolness about her.”

‘We’re there for work’

The boulés allow sorority members to gather together, catch up with each other, discuss all they’ve accomplished so far and plan for their next community service projects.

“We’re there for work,” Ms. King-Thomas said. “It’s when you get all of us in the room to reflect on the work we've done and plan strategically the work that has to be done.”

In her speech before her fellow AKA members, Ms. Harris discussed her agenda and asked for their help in getting out the vote this fall for the then-Biden-Harris ticket.

“When we organize, mountains move,” Ms. Harris said. “When we mobilize, nations change.  And when we vote, we make history. So, I’ll conclude with this. For 116 years, the members of our sorority have been on the front lines of the fight to realize the promise of America. This year, let us continue that work.”

Ms Harris’ visit to the Zeta boulé came right after President Joe Biden had announced that he would not seek re-election.

She made a similar plea for support from “some of the most powerful advocates for justice in America,” citing their efforts to fight for voting rights and against segregation, and for working with the March of Dimes to improve maternal health. 

This time, she also sought help for the national ticket she was about to lead.

“In this moment, our nation needs your leadership once again,” she said. “In this moment, I believe we face a choice between two different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, the other focused on the past. And with your support, I am fighting for our nation’s future.”

For the sorority members, Ms. Harris’ ascension to the Democratic presidential nomination is the culmination of more than a century of activism.

“She of all people understood our history,” Ms. Kelch said. “We have been in the trenches, on the front lines working on behalf of causes in our communities for generations. Kamala knew that this is such a proud, proud period of time for her to realize that the members of these incredible organizations are standing with her, supporting her, and lifting her up.”