'From both of my grandparents, my mother developed a keen political consciousness,' Sen. Harris wrote in her memoir. 'She was conscious of history, conscious of struggle, conscious of inequities. She was born with a sense of justice imprinted on her soul.'
New Delhi In 1958, Shyamala Gopalan arrived in Berkeley, California, after traveling thousands of miles from her family to pursue a doctorate in nutrition and endocrinology.
Gopalan was a precocious 19-year-old student. She had already graduated early from the University of Delhi, but the trip to California marked her first time out of India, where her parents and three siblings lived.She was alone. Fortunately for Gopalan, she had chosen to study at a campus that was about to become the counterculture capital of the United States. There, she found a home within the Bay Area's vibrant Black community, which welcomed her with open arms.
Gopalan and Donald Harris divorced when the children were young, but she would continue to be active in the civil rights movement. Kamala Harris wrote that her mother was acutely aware she was raising two girls that the general public would assume were Black, not Black and Indian.Harris credits her mother, who died in 2009, as one of her most important influences in her life who, along with others, inspired her to go into politics.
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