A political awakening: How Howard University shaped Kamala Harris' identity
WASHINGTON - The war on drugs had erupted, apartheid was raging, Jesse Jackson would soon make the campus a staging ground for his inaugural presidential bid. Running for student office in 1982 at Howard University - the school that nurtured Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison and Stokely Carmichael - was no joke.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., has been known to break the ice with voters by proclaiming the freshman-year campaign in which she won a seat on the Liberal Arts Student Council her toughest political race. Those who were at the university with her are not so sure she is kidding.
It was at Howard that the senator's political identity began to take shape. Thirty-three years after she graduated in 1986, the university in the nation's capital, one of the country's most prominent historically black institutions, also serves as a touchstone in a campaign in which political opponents have questioned the authenticity of her black identity.
"I reference often my days at Howard to help people
