FAIRFAX, Virginia- Democratic vice presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to compete on a major party presidential ticket in America, paid tribute to the victims of the Sept 11, 2001 terrorists attacks and their families during a memorial service Friday in Fairfax, Virginia.
"I'm honored to be here today remembering those 19 years ago as we all do this somber day,” Harris said at Friday's anniversary event. “We're in this together."
The sister-in-law of a California firefighter, Harris cerebrated those who lost their lives that tragic day 19 years ago, including first responders.
And she said that the unprecedented terrorist attacks on American soil tested America's resolve.
"If we learned anything from 9/11 it's that the strength of the human spirit has no boundaries," Harris said.
Al Qaeda terrorists crashed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. on Sept 11, 2001, part of a series of coordinated attacks against the United States that morning that resulted in 2,977 fatalities, and over 25,000 injuries.
The only Black woman in the U.S. Senate, Harris officially accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president last month during the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and following a star studded cast of convention speakers, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Colin Powell, former first lady Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden, and even former Ohio governor John Kasich, a Republican.
She is the fourth woman to compete on a major party presidential ticket in America behind vice presidential candidates Sarah Palin in 2008 and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.
A native of Oakland and a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general elected to the Senate in 2016, Harris is the running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, a former vice president under former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president.
"I accept the nomination for vice president [of the United States of America]," Harris said during her acceptance speech at the Dems convention in August,
Biden also accepted the Democratic nomination at the convention, but for president instead of vice president.
Harris' acceptance speech covered a gambit of issues, including family, community, foreign and domestic policy, institutional racism and sexism, voting and Civil Rights, and what she says are the failed policies of the Trump administration.
The federal lawmaker blamed the president for heightened coronavirus cases and deaths in the country, the U.S. leading all countries with some 193,000 deaths since the pandemic struck in early March.
The daughter of Indian and Jamaica immigrants who, herself, sought the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, Harris, 55, was selected among more than 20 women aspiring to become vice president that caught the former vice president's eye.
Biden promised to choose a female running-mate during the 11th Democratic Debate on March 15 in Washington, D.C as pressure subsequently mounted by Black leaders and Democrats, and even some mainstream media, for that woman to be a woman of color, preferably a Black woman.
