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By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor, associate publisher-July 10, 2024

DALLAS Texas.-Vice President Kamala Harris delivered the keynote address Wednesday morning at the 71st Boule' convention of the National Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) Sorority Inc. in Dallas, Texas, displaying the articulateness, strength, assertiveness, and oratory brilliance that helped to catapult her to the White House in 2020 as the nation's first female and first Black vice president.

The Black sorority to which Harris is a member, has some 350,000 members nationwide.

Dressed in an AKA-brand pink suit, her message was profound and almost indignant at times as she called on the tentative audience of Black women, some 20,000 of them dressed to the nines in the organization's signature pink and green, to help her lead the charge to keep former President Donald Trump from winning another term in November and to give incumbent President Joe Biden four more years.

The presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, Trump, and Biden, the Democratic nominee, will square off on Nov. 5, 2024 for the closely watched presidential election, a rematch of the 2020 election that Biden won, and what Harris described during her speech as an impending election of a lifetime.

"I do believe that this is the most existential, consequential and important election of our lifetime, Harris said to applause from her sorors at the event. "Because we know when we organize, mountains move, when we mobilize, nation's change, and when we vote, we make history."

A dutiful member of AKA since her undergraduate years at the historically Black Howard University in Washington, D.C., and a former California district attorney, state attorney general, and U.S. senator, Harris' speech sounded at times like campaign rhetoric, and she looked attractive, a plus for a prominent woman politician always under the watchful eye of the public, and the paparazzi. But she was effective and her delivery was almost flawless as she drew a standing ovation from AKA -member "sorors" at the convention, and she got national and local media coverage across the country, silencing critics seeking to brand her simply as Biden's  political sidekick.

She preached on a list of things she says the Biden-Harris administration has done since Biden took office in 2021 and what Trump intends to roll back, including eliminating student loan debt for millions of Americans, protecting education, social security, medicaid and medicare, expanding healthcare, lowering insulin prices, and tackling gun violence and the pandemic. She took on the U.S. Supreme Court for overturning Roe v Wade in 2022 in the case of  Dobbs vs Mississippi Health Organization, for which she blamed Trump for appointing three of the conservative justices who were among the majority relative to the 6-3 decision that reversed the court's landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that made abortion legal nationwide.

The United States of America must respect and honor its women, she said.

"America must trust women, America must honor individual choice, America must defend freedom," the Democratic vice president said. "And when our Congress passes a law that restores the reproductive freedoms of Roe, our president, Joe Biden. will sign it."

She increased her tone in discussing the Supreme Court decision rendered earlier this month that granted Trump immunity for official actions taken as president as he still faces a host of  criminal charges behind a guilty jury verdict on 32 counts in one of four criminal cases brought relative to his business records and his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden. Those attempts culminated in a riot at the U.S. Capital Building on Jan 6, 2021, a dark day that Biden and the Democrats say will live in infamy in America.

In short, Harris told the AKA's that the upcoming presidential election is serious business that requires participation by all stakeholders, and that voting rights and freedom and democracy are, no doubt, on the ballot, particularly where Blacks and women's reproductive rights are concerned.

"Sorors this is a serious matter," said Harris in concluding her speech to a rising ovation. "Let us fight for freedom, opportunity and equality."

Harris' AKA convention speech this week in Texas comes as both Trump and Biden are courting the Black vote leading up to the presidential election, both bragging during CNN's June 27 presidential debate about what they claim to have done to improve the lives of Black Americans.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS