How Howard University shaped Kamala Harris

(This story has been updated to add new information)

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign will come home to Howard University on Wednesday to address the election that resulted in a decisive victory for Donald Trump.

The historically Black institution was the site of her first political race – a campaign for freshman class representative that she won – and has featured prominently in her bids for higher office.

Harris held a press conference at the private university hours after she launched her 2019 presidential campaign. She returned to the school in northwest Washington, D.C. for a rally on the day President Joe Biden announced he was running for reelection with her as his vice president.

And on the night of the presidential election, she invited her oldest friends, current and former students, and longtime supporters to Howard University to watch the returns.

Harris declined to make an appearance on Tuesday evening at the watch party that began with hip-hop and Gospel and a choir performing, "Oh Happy Day." The mood dampened as the evening went on, as results rolled in that spelled trouble for Harris in key battleground states. North Carolina was called for Trump.

A campaign co-chair for Harris addressed the gathering instead, just before 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

"We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to try to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken," campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said. "So you won't hear from the vice president tonight. But you will hear from her tomorrow, because she will back here tomorrow to address not only the HU family, not only to address her supporters, but to address the nation."

Howard alumni, Democratic activists, Biden administration officials and Harris supporters had packed into the school’s Yard, where inspirational figures such as the late South African President Nelson Mandela, former U.S. President Barack Obama and talk show host Oprah Winfrey have delivered addresses over the years, hoping to see Harris speak on Tuesday evening.

Me'kayla Rothmiller, a junior from Miami, Florida, 21, said it was invigorating to see an alumna from her university top a presidential ticket. But she said, "I'm just so jittery, I'm so anxious to see what happens."

Harris gave Howard’s commencement address there in 2017 and wore a Howard sweatshirt in July as she worked the phones following Biden’s abrupt departure from the 2024 race.

When it was time for her debate with Trump later in the summer, she returned to the campus for her early prep.

Howard is one of the country’s more preeminent historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. It counts Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the Supreme Court, and writers Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, seminal authors in African-African American literature, among its alumni.

Students and alumni refer to the well-regarded university as “The Mecca” for its leadership in Black higher education.

“This is a belief system that we've had at Howard for a really long time,” Jill Louis, a Dallas-based attorney who pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha at the same time as Harris, said in an interview prior to the event. “And as Kamala Harris' line sister, I have also held a belief system in her greatness from the beginning of meeting her through all of her growth and all the different positions she's had.”

Harris received her undergraduate degree from Howard in 1986. She attended law school in California and served as the state’s attorney general and a U.S. senator before she was elected vice president.

She would have been the first HBCU graduate to become president of the United States. Harris is the first vice president in U.S. history to have attended an HBCU.

At the event, Trinity Garrison, a junior from Miami, said Harris' campaign brought the HBCU community together. "All HBCU communities, not just Howard," she said. "At first it was a little scary, putting one of our own out there for the world to nitpick and make opinions about, but the more we got into the race, I think the more we started to find our fire again, and that was very inspiring to watch, to see us all come together to stand behind Kamala and root each other on."

The university moved classes online the week of the election to make way for its most famous contemporary.

"Tonight, as our nation votes, and we observe a time honored ritual of our democracy, encompassing the right for our voices to be heard, the right to express ourselves across aisles, tonight, as we continue the hard and necessary work of democracy, the work that advances our nation forward, we at Howard are proud and honored to be able to vote for our alumna and welcome her home," Howard University president Ben Vinson III said in remarks as programming got under way.

Harris braced for a long night and partial results

Harris spent part of her day calling into radio shows across the battlegrounds. She stopped by a phone bank at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. in the afternoon.

The vice president, who has said she ate “a family-sized bag of nacho Doritos” in 2016 after she won her Senate race and former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton lost the presidency, brought a box of chips.

Harris said in an August fundraising email that she “tore up” her notes and promised in her victory speech that night to fight Trump.

And for the next eight years she did. First, as a senator on the Judiciary Committee, where she challenged his nominees, and later, as Biden’s running mate, defeating Trump and making him a one-term president.

The results of the 2024 campaign, in which she replaced Biden in the sudden shake-up of the Democratic ticket, were not expected to come in as quickly as they did.

Her campaign warned prior to the event that it may have only partial results from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona – three swing states that could determine the outcome - by the end of the evening on Tuesday. But the fact that the campaign said Harris planned to address the nation the next day suggested her aides were not feeling hopeful.

Before the race was called, Rothmiller said whether Harris wins or loses, she was happy to be part of history. "The fact that she's even up there, or even got this close, it's like dang, maybe I can get up there, too, one day. Or maybe if not me, my sisters can get there, too, one day," she said. "Just to know that we finally got this far in history, is like wow, what a time to be alive."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harris nixed plans to speak at Howard, but her team pledged she'll return