Vice President Kamala Harris is no stranger to a historic feat. As the first woman and Asian American vice president and woman elected attorney general of California, Harris continues to break barriers and inspire millions as she inches closer to Election Day. If elected, Harris would be the first woman, Asian American and HBCU graduate to become President of the United States.
NBC News Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor recalls watching President Obama’s run for office as a student at Georgetown University, and though it was one she did not cover, she said the moment was just as historic as this.
Much like Harris, Alcindor has a passion for social justice, having been inspired by the story of Emmett Till to pursue journalism. Throughout her career, she covered the killing of Trayvon Martin, the Baltimore protests and the Ferguson unrest. During her time at PBS News Hour, she covered the Trump administration, where she was repeatedly insulted by President Trump. Since then, she has transitioned to NBC News and has begun working on her memoir.
Alcindor shares her thoughts on Harris’ meteoric rise to the top of the Democratic ticket, her experience covering this historic moment as a Black woman journalist and the broader significance of this milestone for Black women in leadership.
EBONY: How do you, as a Black reporter, feel about this moment of potentially having a Black woman president?
Yamiche Alcindor: It’s really interesting because as a reporter, this moment [is] to cover a story that I know better than any political story I’ve ever covered in my lifetime. I know this story because I’ve been covering Vice President Harris since she was Attorney General Harris, and when she was Senator Harris. I’ve interviewed her, and I’ve talked to her multiple times. I know a lot about why she is running and what she thinks about elected office and the responsibilities of being an elected official. I’ve also just really known this story because she’s also, of course, a woman of color, a Black woman who went to Howard [University] and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. I’m also a member, although, of course, we joined in different decades. But I understand sort of culturally what it means when you make the decision to join that organization.
I also know culturally what it means to be a Black woman who has ambition and who has drive, but who is also wanting to make sure that you’re seen as qualified and that you’re not seen as someone who has handed [you] anything. So, I think from the reporting point of view, this is incredibly exciting for me because I really know this story, I would say better than any other story I’ve ever covered, in my lifetime.
As a reporter who has covered VP Harris’s rise in great detail, what sentiments do you have about this historic moment?
There were always signs and hints that Vice President Harris was going to be a star because she’s made history over and over again in her lifetime. Back to when she became the first Black woman Attorney General for California, when she became only the second Black woman in history to serve in the Senate. She’s over and over again proven that she can make history, that she can have the ambition, but also the drive, the will [and] the stamina to make it to the thing that she wants most. It’s been really interesting to be able to cover this story, understanding the trajectory of her career and how she got to this moment.
What has navigating the political landscape as a Black woman reporter been like in this moment?
It’s really interesting because there have obviously been other African American people who have run for office whose story I didn’t know as well. I think of President Obama. I was in college when he was running. I knew of him as a candidate. I knew of him as a senator, but I didn’t cover him in any big way. Even when he was president, I was on the streets covering Black Lives Matter. I was covering Ferguson. So, it’s not so much that that I know Vice President Harris’ story because she’s a Black woman, which of course, is a big part of this. I know because I’m also a Black woman, but also because I have the history of covering her in particular. It’s really a chance to be able to use all of the skills that I have, which are keeping in touch with sources, putting things in context, explaining to people why the things that she’s doing are relevant to certain parts of society and why she’s making sure that she’s really focusing on her accomplishments and her qualities and earning this nomination.
I think being a Black reporter at this moment really helps me understand the relevance of her candidacy and the challenges that she’s going to face because I’ve covered race, not only because I’m a Black person, but also because I’ve just covered race as a beat since I’ve become a reporter. I think it’s incredibly important.
What are your thoughts on the importance of having minority representation in press rooms across the country as the election season continues to heat up?
Diversity in newsrooms is incredibly important. I would say that not only racial diversity, but [also] geographic diversity is important. I think having a number of viewpoints in your newsroom, people who went to Ivy League schools, but also people who went to state schools, people who went to community college, people like me who have family members who didn’t go to college, who are thinking all the time of sort of everyday Americans who are just trying to survive and thrive in America. I consider all of that to be part of the diversity that we need in our newsrooms.
Harris had a swift, yet historic rise to the top of the Democratic ticket. What was your firsthand account of covering that like?
Sunday, July 21, the day that President Biden decided to step down and drop out of the presidential race and endorse Vice President Harris was extraordinary. I was sitting in my kitchen feeding my 14-month-old son at the time, and I saw the tweet pop up and saw the post that said he was dropping out. And I nearly threw my baby in the air (Alcindor laughs) because it was such a moment where I was like, “Everything has shifted.” And for those first 10 to 15 minutes, I was wondering, “Well, what next?” And then the president comes out and says, “I’m gonna endorse Vice President Harris.” So, I handed my baby off to my husband, and I went downstairs in the basement and captured and reported on history from my basement. And the first thing I did was, of course, start talking to NBC News because we have a vast way to that.
Within an hour, I was given the assignment to go and do a story about her background and sort of how she got to be in this moment. And it was then that I realized I was covering a story that I knew better than any other story I’d ever covered because I wrote that biographical story of her from memory. I went back and checked the facts, but I knew I knew where she had come from just because I had covered her for almost a decade. I knew that her mother was an Indian immigrant, that her father was a Jamaican immigrant and that they had met being civil rights activists. As a little girl, I knew she had grown up going to civil rights protests. I knew the history that she had made while she was in California, both as the district attorney for San Francisco and then as the Attorney General for California. These were things that I just knew from my background and from covering her. So, it was an extraordinary moment for me to recognize, ‘Oh, you’re covering a story that you really know a lot about.’
I wrote a story about her biography in about 15 minutes, the fastest script I’ve ever written in my life and was able to then rearrange it and talk to the producers about what pictures we had and what moments we could capture. And it was really something that was pretty telling of both the resources that NBC News had to get that up then really quickly, and it was part of this network-wide special where we then went up on the broadcast network anchored by Lester Holt. And I could sit there and talk to him about the script I had just written and the story we put up that night, but also about her trajectory. And I could say, I have talked to her before. I know that her mother told her, ‘You might be the first, but don’t be the last.’ I knew just the things that sort of made the Vice President tick.
That, to me, was another extraordinary moment to just sit back and think, ‘You know why she’s running; you know what is emboldening her and pushing her forward toward this goal that she has to be president of the United States.’ And then, of course, I took a beat and realized that there were so many people that I knew through her background that I could just call a bunch of people. So, I felt really much like you are covering history, but you’re ready to cover this history.
As a member of the Divine Nine, how do you feel about its impact on reinvigorating Black voters this election season?
‘Being a part of the Divine Nine, which of course is this group of historically Black sororities and fraternities, it’s interesting because when you’re a member, you understand that there’s this lifelong goal to be of service to all mankind, which is what members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated say. That there is a sisterhood that you want to forge there that cuts across political lines because these organizations are not inherently Democrats or Republicans. They are Black people historically who have gotten together. However, I should say that the organizations have become more diverse. It’s not just all Black people, but mostly Black people in these organizations. To say that America needs to be a place where it is really keeping its promises, and that means giving people the ability to vote giving people the ability to live in an economy that works for them, all of those things are part of the legacy of the Divine Nine
To see some of those organizations shift [and] sort of get into that space has been very interesting for me as a reporter. I’m gonna be backing any one candidate. I’m covering Vice President Harris as a reporter, not as someone who’s, of course, a sorority sister or someone who’s a supporter of her. I’m covering this as a reporter, the same way I would cover Vice President Pence or anybody else who might have been running for president. That being said, I think it’s really interesting to see this moment where you see these organizations stepping up in this new way.’”
Vice President Harris and Former President Trump are set to debate for the first time on Tuesday, September 10. What are you looking forward to most about this debate?
“It’s going to be really interesting to see the debate between Vice President Harris and Former President Trump, especially as it relates to her support among African American voters. A new poll out by USA Today in Suffolk University shows that Vice President Harris is doing better among Black voters than President Biden was doing. But she’s still not at the sort of 80 to 90%, and really 90% that she needs in order to win by big margins so that she can ensure that voting bloc, which is really the backbone of the Democratic Party, comes out for her in big, big numbers.
You think of someone like President Obama, who was able to win twice because he was able to run up his numbers, not only among, of course, other groups, but African Americans turning up in record numbers. So, I think she’s really going to have to really appeal to Black people, make them feel motivated, make them feel like she really has a vision for how to improve their lives. And in particular, that means not just talking about HBCUs and criminal justice, which I know I’ve talked to a lot of Black voters [about]. Yes, they want to hear about that, but they also want to hear about the economy. They want to hear about education. They want to hear about healthcare. So, I think particularly for African American voters who are watching, I think the ones who are still on the fence are gonna be looking like, ‘Well, why should I leave my house? Maybe stand in line for hours and hours, maybe be hungry and thirsty trying to be trying to vote.’ There are places in this country where it takes hours and hours to stand in line, and maybe even to miss a day of work. She’s really going to have to motivate Black voters, and I would say independent and undecided voters, but particularly Black voters, to do that work for her and to have the stamina to withstand what it might take to vote in this country come November.”
This is VP Harris’s first debate as a presidential candidate. What are her strengths and weaknesses?
What I can say, just in talking to sources who are close to Vice President Harris, is that she is still trying to work out specifically how to differentiate herself from President Biden. She, of course, is running on the idea that she wants to build on the Biden legacy, but there is going to be, I think, a real question is how is she going to be different than President Biden, whether that’s on her Israel or Middle East policy, whether that’s on the way that she views foreign policy. I think [that’s going to be] something that’s going to be really key for her to do. I also think it’s going to be key for her to really lay out how are people, everyday American’s lives going to be, really be impacted by her presidency, not just in attacking Republicans, but really what is she going to do. She’s been laying that out in her housing policies, in her policies dealing with price gouging and her policies dealing with down payment assistance.
I think there’s going to be some policy questions that she’s definitely going to have to answer. And I think she’s also going to have to answer [about] a couple of policy stances that have changed over the years, I think, of her support for fracking. At one point, she said she wasn’t in support of fracking. Now, she says that she might be in support of fracking. So, I think it’s going to be interesting to see how she explains how she’s evolved on the issue of fracking and how she’s evolved on the issue of the border. At one point, she was saying that she was for decriminalizing the southern border. Now, she’s saying that that’s not particularly where she stands. So, I think really honing how she answers those questions. I know sources close to Vice President Harris have told me that some of her views have evolved because she’s naturally a continuously learning person. She spent the last three and a half years traveling around the country, learning what voters are talking about and what’s most important to them. She, of course, was also doing the job of the vice president, getting those daily presidential briefings sitting in on sensitive information. So, there will be a way, possibly for her to talk about how her experience over the last three years made some of her stances evolve. So I think that will be something she’ll have to focus on.
But I think she’ll also have to just in some ways because this is a debate that’s going to be about substance, but also with Former President Trump, it’s going be a lot of, well, how do people feel about the way that they see these two people sitting on stage or standing on stage together. I think a lot of it’s also going to have to be talking to people that are close to the vice president. They’re really focused on the optics of this. They want her to come off as someone who is qualified to be president, as someone who can be calm and not get pulled into the personal attacks that Donald Trump is surely going to throw her way. But I’m also told that she wants to needle Donald Trump and wants to get him to be a little unhinged. One source said: ‘A person who mumbles, a person who stumbles, the person who forgets things.’ They want that side of Donald Trump to be on full display for the American people. I’ll be watching really for the spectacle of this. They’ve never met before, which I think is fascinating. I think just to see the vibes and how they interact will definitely be something to behold.
As a Black journalist, how has it been for you to cover VP Harris’ rise to the presidential ticket?
It’s really extraordinary to see the rise and to be able to cover the rise of Vice President Harris, of course, who would be the first Black woman, South Asian woman to be President of the United States, and who, of course, has already become the first Black woman, first woman of color, first South Asian, to be at the top of a major party ticket. For me, I got into journalism because of the story of Emmett Till. Of course, a young boy who was from the city where EBONY Magazine was founded, Chicago. Murdered in 1955 in Mississippi for being accused of whistling at a white woman, a heinous crime. His mother valiantly had an open casket for him and changed history, and frankly, it changed my life. When I learned about the story of Emmett Till, I knew I wanted to be a reporter.
In getting into journalism, I was shocked at times that part of really doing the civil rights reporting that I’ve loved to do has been sadly covering how Black people live and die in America. I’ve covered the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sonya Massey, of so many others. And it’s been heartbreaking at times to cover the story of civil rights in this country, and it be about murder or about death, or about police indictments or non-indictments. But it’s also in this moment, civil rights reporting also it’s about covering this history-making candidate that is Vice President Harris. And covering the sort of hope that you see in so many Black people’s faces. That they are excited to think that maybe someone who looks like them might be at the top of the most powerful position in America. It’s definitely extraordinary to cover, and I think it’s extraordinary to cover because I’ve just covered this woman, Vice President Harris, for years and years and years. So, I think in some ways this is a story that feels native to me because I’ve talked to her, I’ve seen her in casual settings, I’ve seen her in formal settings, I’ve talked to her on the phone, I’ve interviewed her one-on-one. And it really, to me, feels like this, this moment where history is happening, and I feel so ready to be able to cover it. And it feels so much in line with both my reporting as a political reporter but also my reporting as a civil rights reporter that it feels like I’m in this divine moment to be able to be in this space to cover it. I’m a young girl who is maybe not so young anymore, but a young woman, I would say, who is the child of Haitian immigrants who came to the United States, who dreamed of their child being able to take advantage of all the opportunities that America has.
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