How a Louisiana woman became Kamala Harris' "second mother"
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When Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president in 2021, she placed her hand atop two Bibles. The black one belonged to Thurgood Marshall, and the brown one was a family Bible from Regina Shelton, who she views as a second mother. Photo: Saul Loeb, Pool/Getty Images
One of the key people who raised Vice President Kamala Harris was Regina Shelton, a Louisiana woman who ended up in Harris' Bay Area neighborhood as part of the Great Migration of Black families who sought opportunity outside the Jim Crow-era South.
Why it matters: Shelton was Harris' "second mother," an early mentor who pushed her "to give and to serve," Harris said at Essence Fest in New Orleans earlier this month.
The big picture: Harris' early years were spent in an apartment above Shelton's nursery school, and Harris would eventually work there, too.
- "I would watch Miss Shelton as she would nurture and advise a young mother. I would watch her as she would counsel young parents on how to get through when times were rough," Harris said at Essence Fest.
- Shelton was like other members of Harris' family, she said, who were the people her community would call on when they needed guidance.
- "And so I was raised by and among a bunch of people who really felt a responsibility to give and to serve," she said, "and it was expected of all of us to serve, so that is the life I've chosen."
Zoom in: That connection was why Harris' "Louisiana family," as she called them, attended her Essence Fest appearance July 6.
- It's also why, when Harris was sworn in as a California senator and as vice president, she put her hand on Shelton's family Bible.
- "At every step of the way, Mrs. Shelton is with me," Harris wrote for PopSugar.
Between the lines: The role Shelton played for Harris was also crucial to her understanding of Black culture, according to Josie Pickens for Madame Noir.
- In "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey," Harris' memoir, "she describes all the ways Mrs. Shelton educated her about Black culture and Black identity—sometimes by taking the Harris girls to church on Sundays and by teaching them how to cook soul food, which are two parts of a collection of Black girl rites of passage," Pickens wrote.
It wasn't uncommon, a family friend has said, to find Harris sitting at Shelton's kitchen table talking about current events as Shelton made gumbo or okra.
- It was a relationship encouraged by Harris' mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who was of South Asian descent. Harris' father, Donald J. Harris, is Jamaican American.
- But Shyamala knew Kamala and her sister Maya "would always be seen by the world as Black, and that they needed to bond with other Black girls and Black women in order to learn how to navigate all that being Black and a woman might mean for them," Pickens wrote.
Shelton died in 1999, according to Yahoo News.
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