‘It’s an amazing day to be an AKA’: Local members of nation’s oldest Black sorority celebrate inauguration of Vice President Kamala Harris

The inauguration of Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday took on special significance for members of the nation’s oldest sorority for Black women.

Just a few hours after watching the inaugural celebration live, Roberta Walker, a graduate of Hampton University, beamed when someone in a parking lot recognized her pink Chuck Taylor sneakers and pearl necklace as trademarks of the new vice president and the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

“It’s an amazing day to be an AKA,” replied Walker, a member of the sorority’s Pi Rho Omega chapter in Chesterfield County.

In addition to becoming the first female vice president, Harris, who attended Howard University in Washington in the 1980s, is the first graduate of a historically Black college or university and Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority member to ascend to the nation’s second-highest elected office.

Harris, whose mother and father immigrated from India and Jamaica, respectively, also became the first Black person and first person of South Asian descent to become vice president.

“It’s such a big day not only for us, but for all women of color and different ethnicities — and women in general,” said Walker, an educational consultant with a doctoral degree from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Founded at Howard in 1908, Alpha Kappa Alpha has evolved into an international service organization with approximately 300,000 members across more than 1,000 chapters worldwide.

To celebrate the occasion, Alpha Kappa Alpha, which Harris joined at Howard, declared Wednesday as Soror Kamala D. Harris Day. Members of the sorority watching the celebrations across the country wore pearls and the sorority’s salmon pink and apple green colors.

In a letter sent to members last week in commemoration of the sorority’s 113th anniversary, Glenda Glover, the organization’s international president, said Harris’ inauguration would signal the dawning of a new day in the nation’s history.

“Alpha Kappa Alpha has helped to usher in this new day, this new light, this new season,” she said. “With the commitment of our founders as our compass, our sisterhood fought for freedom and equality for Black women as we struggled to expand our democracy to include the entire framework of the first three words of our Constitution, ‘We the People.’”

In the Richmond area on Wednesday evening, hundreds of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority members from six chapters across the region organized a virtual happy hour over Zoom to commemorate the historic event.

Linda Jackson-Shaw, a member of the Upsilon Omega chapter in Richmond, said the virtual event would include up to 500 of the approximately 900 members in the region.

She said Harris exemplifies the fortitude and excellence of all the sorority’s members.

“For many of us, it’s an emotional feeling to just think about how awesome this is,” she said. “At a time when the country is in so much turmoil, it’s a bright light for all the troubling things that have been happening.”

This article originally ran on richmond.com.