Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California, 1964 to biologist Shyamala Gopalan and economist Donald J. Harris. The Harris family moved to various locations in the Midwestern United States from 1966 to 1970, when she moved back to California. At the age of twelve, she moved to Montreal, Quebec, where she attended school through her first year of college. She then attended Howard University and the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
In her early career, Harris served as Alameda County Deputy District Attorney, then San Francisco County Assistant District Attorney, and then running the Family and Children's Services Division in the San Francisco City Attorney's Office. She then served two terms as District Attorney of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011.
Early life and education
Kamala Devi Harris was born at Kaiser Permanente's Oakland Medical Center in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964. The actual hospital building in which Harris was born no longer exists; it was demolished after the Oakland Medical Center moved to a newer building. Kamala Harris is a Black woman of Afro-Jamaican and Indian (Tamil) heritage.
Harris' mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a biologist whose work on the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast cancer research. Shyamala had moved to the United States from India as a 19-year-old graduate student in 1958. After studying nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley, she received her Ph.D. in 1964.
Kamala Harris's father, Donald J. Harris, arrived in the United States from Jamaica in 1961, for graduate study at UC Berkeley, and received a Ph.D. in economics in 1966. Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan met in 1962 and were married in 1963. He would become a Stanford University professor of economics in 1972.
Her parents' home at the time of her birth (and hence, her first home as an infant) was a two-story L-shaped apartment building built in 1946 on Regent Street between Dwight Way and Parker Street—just east of the Telegraph Avenue district in Berkeley's Southside neighborhood.
In 1966, the Harris family moved to Champaign, Illinois (where Kamala's younger sister Maya was born), when her parents took positions at the University of Illinois. The family moved around the Midwest, with both parents working at multiple universities in succession over a brief period. Kamala, along with her mother and sister, moved back to California in 1970, while her father remained in the Midwest. They stayed briefly on Milvia Street in central Berkeley, then at a duplex on Bancroft Way in West Berkeley, an area often called the "flatlands" with a significant Black population. When Harris began kindergarten, she was bused as part of Berkeley's comprehensive desegregation program to Thousand Oaks Elementary School, a public school in a more prosperous neighborhood in northern Berkeley which previously had been 95 percent white, and after the desegregation plan went into effect became 40 percent Black. Harris's parents divorced when she was seven, with her mother maintaining custody.
African-American intellectuals and rights advocates constituted Harris's formative surroundings; Mary Lewis, who helped start the field of African-American studies at San Francisco State University, and taught there for many years, was one of Shyamala Gopalan's most trusted friends. When Shyamala worked late at her lab, Kamala was cared for by Regina Shelton, a Black woman whose day-care center in the apartment below was decorated with pictures of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.
Harris has written that Shyamala "knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women." A neighbor regularly took the Harris girls to an African American church in Oakland where they sang in the children's choir, and the girls and their mother also frequently visited a nearby African American cultural center. Their mother introduced them to Hinduism and took them to a nearby Hindu temple, where Shyamala occasionally sang. As children, she and her sister visited their mother's family in Madras (now Chennai) on occasion. Quote: "Steeped in Indian culture, Harris and her sister, Maya, now a civil rights lawyer and senior policy advisor to Hillary Rodham Clinton, visited family in Madras on occasion." Kamala Harris says she was impressed by her maternal grandfather's progressive views. Harris has remained in touch with her Indian aunts and uncles. The two Harris sisters spent summers with their father in Palo Alto and now and then traveled to Jamaica with him.
When she was twelve, Harris and her sister moved with their mother to Montreal, Quebec, Canada where Shyamala had accepted a research and teaching position at the McGill University-affiliated Jewish General Hospital. Harris attended a French-speaking primary school, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, then F.A.C.E. School, and finally Westmount High School in Westmount, Quebec, graduating in 1981. There, a friend confided to Harris that she had been sexually abused in her home. Hearing of her schoolmate's experience helped form Harris's later commitment as a prosecutor to protect women and children. During her period in Montreal Harris has stated she learned "some" French.
Higher education
After high school, Harris attended Vanier College in Montreal in 1981–1982. She then attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C., living initially in a dorm room at Eton Tower near Thomas Circle. After her freshman year, in the summer of 1983, Harris worked at a McDonald's restaurant in Alameda, California. While at Howard, she interned as a mailroom clerk for California senator Alan Cranston, chaired the economics society, led the debate team, and joined Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She also completed a summer internship at the Federal Trade Commission, worked as a tour guide at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and participated in anti-apartheid protests at the South African embassy and National Mall. Harris graduated in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics.
Harris then returned to California to attend the University of California, Hastings College of the Law (later renamed in 2023 to the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco) through its Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP). While at UC Hastings, she served as president of its chapter of the Black Law Students Association. She graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1989 and was admitted to the California Bar in June 1990.
Early career
Alameda County Deputy District Attorney In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, where she was described as "an able prosecutor on the way up". In her 2019 memoir, she recalled stating her appearance for the People of the State of California before the Alameda County Superior Court at her first trial as a prosecutor: "Kamala Harris, for the people".California Government Code Section 100 requires all prosecutions to be conducted in the name of the people and by their authority. "For the people" became the title of the first chapter of her 2019 memoir and the slogan of her 2020 presidential campaign.
In 1994, Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown, who was then dating Harris, appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later to the California Medical Assistance Commission. Harris took a six-month leave of absence in 1994 from her duties, then afterward resumed working as prosecutor during the years she sat on the boards. Harris's connection to Brown was noted in media reportage as part of a pattern of California political leaders appointing "friends and loyal political soldiers" to lucrative positions on the commissions. Harris has defended her work.
San Francisco County Assistant District Attorney In February 1998, San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan recruited Harris as an assistant district attorney. There she became the chief of the Career Criminal Division, supervising five other attorneys, where she prosecuted homicide, burglary, robbery, and sexual assault casesparticularly three-strikes cases.
In 2000, Harris reportedly clashed with Hallinan's assistant, Darrell Salomon, over Proposition21, which granted prosecutors the option of trying juvenile defendants in Superior Court rather than juvenile courts. Harris campaigned against the measure, which passed. Salomon opposed directing media inquiries about Prop21 to Harris and reassigned her, a de facto demotion. Harris filed a complaint against Salomon and quit.
San Francisco City Attorney's Office In August 2000, Harris took a job at San Francisco City Hall, working for City Attorney Louise Renne. Harris ran the Family and Children's Services Division representing child abuse and neglect cases. Renne endorsed Harris during her D.A. campaign.
District Attorney of San Francisco
In 2002, Harris prepared to run for District Attorney of San Francisco against Hallinan (the incumbent) and Bill Fazio. Harris was the least-known of the three candidates but persuaded the Central Committee to withhold its endorsement from Hallinan. Harris and Hallinan advanced to the general election runoff with 33 and 37 percent of the vote, respectively.
In the runoff, Harris pledged never to seek the death penalty and to prosecute three-strike offenders only in cases of violent felonies. Harris ran a "forceful" campaign, assisted by former mayor Willie Brown, Senator Dianne Feinstein, writer and cartoonist Aaron McGruder, and comedians Eddie Griffin and Chris Rock. Harris differentiated herself from Hallinan by attacking his performance. She argued that she left his office because it was technologically inept, emphasizing his 52-percent conviction rate for serious crimes despite an 83-percent average conviction rate statewide. Harris charged that his office was not doing enough to stem the city's gun violence, particularly in poor neighborhoods like Bayview and the Tenderloin, and attacked his willingness to accept plea bargains in cases of domestic violence. Harris won with 56 percent of the vote, becoming the first person of color elected as district attorney of San Francisco.
Harris ran unopposed for a second term in November 2007.
Public safety
Non-violent crimes
In the summer of 2005, Harris created an environmental crimes unit. Also in 2005, the National Black Prosecutors Association awarded Harris the Thurgood Marshall Award.
In 2007, Harris and city attorney Dennis Herrera investigated San Francisco supervisor Ed Jew for violating residency requirements necessary to hold his supervisor position; Harris charged Jew with nine felonies, alleging that he had lied under oath and falsified documents to make it appear he resided in a Sunset District home, necessary so he could run for supervisor in the 4th district. Jew pleaded guilty in October 2008 to unrelated federal corruption charges (mail fraud, soliciting a bribe, and extortion) and pleaded guilty the following month in state court to a charge of perjury for lying about his address on nomination forms, as part of a plea agreement in which the other state charges were dropped and Jew agreed to never again hold elected office in California. Harris described the case as "about protecting the integrity of our political process, which is part of the core of our democracy". For his federal offenses, Jew was sentenced to 64 months in federal prison and a $10,000 fine; for the state perjury conviction, Jew was sentenced to one year in county jail, three years' probation, and about $2,000 in fines.