Now we’re uplifted’ Kamala Harris’ Bay Area friends exhale extol historic election

Amelia Ashley Ward has had Kamala Harris’ back since their early days in San Francisco, when Ward was running a Black community newspaper and Harris was a little-known Black woman running for district attorney.

Ward endorsed her then — and reported on Harris’ riding a cable car through the streets of the city to drum up support — and has remained a close friend and political ally ever since.

On Saturday, when her son called with the news while she was getting her hair done at Glitz Beauty Salon in San Francisco — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris finally had won the race for the White House — the salon erupted in cheers. Ward broke down in tears.

Amelia Ashley Ward, who as publisher of the Black community newspaper the Sun-Reporter in San Francisco supported Kamala Harris’s campaign for District Attorney, said Saturday she is thrilled with Harris’s win. (photo by Shunise Criswell)

“You have to realize,” Ward said, “I’ve been crying since she got the nod to run, and now that this has happened — it’s like, wow.”

The first woman and first person of color to become America’s vice president-elect, this daughter of Jamaican and Indian parents who grew up in Berkeley, shattered barriers on Saturday and made history.

“It’s history for us and history for the country and the women’s movement. This woman has finally kicked in the glass ceiling, and now we’re uplifted,” Ward said, “especially members of our community and young girls everywhere. They know Kamala has opened that door, and they too can walk in.”

The Bay Area Indian community also responded with enthusiasm Saturday as Harris became the first Indian-American to ascend to the White House. At an Indian beauty salon in Fremont, Meenakshi Kumar said she had been fielding calls all day from friends in the Bay Area and relatives in India, a country where former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was the first woman to lead more than 50 years ago.

“It makes me proud that an Indian woman has gone to that level,” Kumar said of Harris. “Indian Americans have been making some headway into American politics, but someone getting to this level of leadership is a really big thing.”

In Harris’ old neighborhood, just a few blocks from Bancroft Way where she and her mother and little sister rented an upstairs apartment, neighbors rushed into the streets.

Paul Rude, who keeps a hand-painted “Trump Danger” meter tacked to his garage, moved the needle from “extreme” to “very high” Saturday with his neighbors “hooting and hollering.”

“It’s a great relief,” he said.

As the long-awaited news lit up cell phones Saturday morning — four days after Tuesday’s election — Harris’ loyal friends who have supported her for more than two decades, campaigning for her runs for California attorney general, U.S. senator and even president, were overcome.

These are the people who texted her and wrote op-eds when President Trump called her “nasty” and a “monster,” congratulated her for her boldness when she criticized Biden for his opposition decades ago to busing students for school desegregation, who flew to battlegrounds states to get out the vote in the days before the election, and said their prayers every night as the ballots were being counted in the days since.

“I’m proud. Sixty years ago, Black women had to walk in the back door of white residents,” said Lateefah Simon, who worked with Harris in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office two decades ago and has been a close friend since. “In January, a Black woman will walk in the front door of the White House — not as a guest, but as the second-in-command of the free world. There’s no turning back.”

Some of Harris’ longtime supporters, however, remained as nervous as exhilarated.

Rebecca Prozan, who flew to Arizona in the days before the election to knock on doors and get out the vote, said the country is so divided, and the challenges of getting the coronavirus under control and restoring the economy are daunting.

“I’m worried that we won’t be able to move forward together,” Prozan said, and it is up to Biden and Harris “to turn everything around, and that is a lot to do.”

She said she can’t even think about the inauguration yet.

“I just feel like the next 60 days is going to be really difficult, like nothing we’ve ever seen,” Prozan said.

In the Glitz Beauty Shop on Saturday morning, as “everyone was screaming” with the news, Ward — still publisher of the weekly Sun-Reporter — held tightly to her cell phone. On it were messages she would cherish for the rest of her life.

On Friday, when Biden and Harris were ahead and climbing in the vote count but the race still had not been called, she had messaged the woman she had believed in for 18 years.

“You already know,” Ward wrote to her. “It had to be you. I’m beyond proud. I love you, Madame Vice President.”

Harris, in Delaware with Biden at the time, responded quickly. Ward, of course, excused the typo.

“We’ve been on this journey together fir a long time,” Harris wrote. “Thank you sister Amelia. Love you.”