Kamala Harris is entering the presidential race against Donald Trump in November, but the social club she joined in college four decades ago may be getting its biggest benefit yet.
“Whatever she wants our coalition to do, we’ll be there to help her pursue it and get it done,” said Tanya Baham, a member of Harris’ college sorority who recently attended the Democratic National Convention.
Sororities and fraternities abound on American college campuses — with their Greek-lettered names, exclusive membership and promise of community, usually on a same-sex basis.
But Harris’s membership in Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority, gives her campaign direct access to a network of 360,000 women across the country, many of whom are excited to see one of their own in the White House.
And the Democratic Party, which counts women and black voters as core to its electoral base, is taking notice.
Though the sorority itself is nonpartisan, many, like Baham, are willing to use their networks to personally campaign for fundraising and voter registration, since the election could be very close.
“We’re going to make sure that our children, our youth, our elderly have the opportunity to register and get to the polls,” said Baham, a social worker from Louisiana.
Built-in Network
Harris joined AKA at Howard University, a historically black school in Washington, where the sorority was founded in 1908 — the first organization of its kind for black undergraduate students in the United States.
Over the next few decades, more black sororities and fraternities emerged, providing refuge for African American students amid the ravages of American racism and also providing a basis for organization for civil rights.
AKA has chapters for both graduate students and college undergraduates, making it more than just a college-level organization.
As vice president, Harris has hosted Black sorority and fraternity leaders at the White House, and she keynoted the AKA’s convention in Texas in July before she ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket.
Later that month, within days of President Joe Biden’s reelection bid ending, she was at the convention of another Black sorority, Zeta Phi Beta, in Indiana.
AKA members were among those involved in a “Win with Black Women” Zoom call that raised $1.5 million, and former sorority president Glenda Glover is leading outreach for Harris at the country’s historically black colleges.
For the first time in history, the AKA has also formed a political action committee, which is used to raise funds for political candidates.
“We’re all ready to go to work and make this happen,” Donna Miller, an Illinois county official who was on the Zoom call, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It excited a lot of people, young and old, all generations and all ethnicities.”
Chuppah
But while AKA and other Black sororities provide a network for Harris, it’s hard to gauge how much of that will translate into actual votes in November.
The sorority and its members have generally remained silent — several members declined to speak to AFP about the election.
Some referred AFP to the sorority’s headquarters, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Half a dozen individual chapters also did not respond to requests for comment.
“Mobilization through sororities can’t hurt,” said Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.
But Hopkins cautioned that “in general, only a small number of voters in the United States who attend four-year colleges are members of these organizations.”
And while African Americans are predominantly Democratic voters, they have been drifting away from the party in recent years — according to her research, this decline has come primarily from younger and lower voter turnout.
At the same time, Amanda Wilkerson, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Central Florida who has studied Black voters, said organizations like Black sororities and fraternities are “hidden tools” that are often ignored by polling or the media even though they have been organizing for past elections at the national and local levels.
He said his members and alumni are well versed in election campaigning and the 2024 election is not their first election.
Wilkerson said Harris is “the first candidate of her kind to be able to leverage such a network of support.” “But this isn’t new at all.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)