With Harris’s rise, the Divine Nine reach new heights

WHEN Kamala Harris stepped into her power at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, on November 7, sheathed in an ivory suit accented with her signature earrings, most recognised this as a tip of the hat to suffragists (who wore white in the early 1900s in their fight for the vote) and the women's movement.

But the uninterrupted white, the glinting pearls, the confident stride that could’ve easily become a stroll – and to the lyrics of a Mary J Blige jam no less? – were also nods to the incoming vice-president’s unbreakable ties to the Divine Nine, the group of historically black sororities and fraternities that, for more than a century, have been