WASHINGTON – For Tuesday mornings; WX501-504 and DCMD501-503

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As a young college student, Kamala Harris made the nearly 3-mile trip from Howard University to the National Mall to protest against apartheid in South Africa.

In 2017, as a senator, she returned to her alma mater to deliver the commencement address.

In July, when she received word that she would likely be the Democratic presidential nominee, she was wearing her Howard sweatshirt in the vice president’s residence.

Howard University, one of the nation’s best-known historically Black colleges, has been central to Harris’ origin story. Now, as she seeks to become the first woman elected president, the university is having a capstone moment.

The school has produced luminaries like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and the author Toni Morrison. Some at the university see Harris’ elevation as vice president as another validation of one of the school’s core missions of service.

“There’s clearly a direct relationship between Howard and its relationship to democracy and the democracy that we envision, one that is practiced in a way that includes all of us,” said Melanie Carter, the founding director of the Howard University Center for HBCU Research, Leadership, and Policy.