Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California. After attending Howard University and the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, she embarked on a rise through the California legal system, emerging as state attorney general in 2010. Following the November 2016 elections, Harris became just the second African-American woman and the first South Asian American to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2019, she declared her candidacy for the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Reared in a predominantly African-American neighborhood of Berkeley, she was brought to civil rights demonstrations as a toddler and sang in a Baptist choir. Her mother also ensured that Harris and her younger sister, Maya, maintained ties to their Indian heritage by raising them with Hindu beliefs and taking them to her home country every couple of years.
Harris' parents divorced when she was seven years old, and at age 12, she moved with her mother and sister to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She learned to speak some French during her time in Quebec. She demonstrated her burgeoning political instincts by organizing a protest against a building owner who wouldn't allow neighborhood kids to play on the lawn.
