These Black Granite State women say Harris’ candidacy gives them hope

“This is within our lifetime, and women are not going back. We’re not going back,” said Jackie Weatherspoon, a former NH House representative, who also worked for the US Department of State under the Clinton Administration.

Weatherspoon, a grandmother of five, and the third Black woman elected in New Hampshire, was talking about the support she has seen extended to Vice President Kamala Harris as she is poised to be the Democratic nominee for president. Weatherspooon said the support is “unprecedented,” and different from the enthusiasm she saw around Hillary Clinton’s races. 

“And those were lonely days when we were supporting a woman, when we were supporting Hillary, because not even the young women would support her,” she said, highlighting how 44,000 Black women rallied behind Harris and raised $1.6 million for her in just three hours over a Zoom call earlier this week. 

Harris, 59, who made history by being the first woman and Black vice president of the US, was born to an Indian-born mother, and Jamaican-born father. A woman of many firsts, in 2017 Harris became the first Indian American senator in the country, and was California’s first woman and South Asian attorney general, and of course, the first woman vice president of America.

Harris became the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday. Biden’s exit from the race, was followed by many top Democrats and all 25 New Hampshire delegates unanimously agreeing to endorse Harris.

According to a recent poll, Harris is holding a slight edge over former president Donald Trump by two points, with 44% support, against Trump’s 42%.

“America needs to recall the time when white women wouldn’t even let Black women march alongside them to gain the right to vote, and so what the country is witnessing right now is nothing short of being historic,” Weatherspoon said. It wasn’t until 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act that all American Black people secured the right to vote. 

“I am so happy I’m alive to participate, and I’m healthy enough to talk,” said Weatherspoon, who has been involved in advocacy efforts for women’s rights internationally through her work in the White House, and the United Nations. “This has been a gift and a privilege.”

Women of color throughout New Hampshire are echoing Weatherspoon’s sentiments

Jeadminas Alexis, a first-time voter, whose family moved to the US from Haiti in 2016—the year Donald Trump was elected to power—when she was just 13, said that she never imagined she’d participate in such a historic race in her first election. 

President of the Black Student Union at Keene State College, Alexis, 21, said that Harris’ potential to be at the helm of affairs in America, gives her confidence to do her own advocacy for the rights of Black students on campus. 

“Even looking up to myself as the president of BSU, it has been a challenge,” she said. “I am sure there were even bigger challenges for her.”

She said Harris’ ascension to being the presidential nominee inspires her to keep achieving her own dreams to be successful as an immigrant Black woman. 

“Although, I mean, she was a vice president, so she was already someone, but she just keeps going higher,” Alexis said. “And I think that alone also motivates me as somebody that wants to get in high places.”

As for top issues as a Gen Z participant in these elections, Alexis believes a future Harris administration could help lessen racism and white supremacy in America because it is only getting “worse day by day,”she said. She also hopes it leads to lesser classroom censorship on teaching race and gender-related text.

Another Granite Stater, Jamaican-born entrepreneur and diversity, equity and inclusion expert, Gail Somers said Harris’ candidacy finally makes her feel like America is caught up with the times. 

“We’re aligned with some of the other leading first world countries that have had female leadership,” said Somers, who is the owner of Caribbean restaurant, Yahso American Grille in Keene. “I really have always thought that as an American and living in the US, that we’re so out of touch with that as a possibility really.”

As a Black woman, with an immigrant background, Somers is excited at the possibility of having a future president who has a nuanced understanding of what it means to live at the intersectionality of being Black and immigrant. 

“I think that means she’s definitely more culturally aware, and she would have a tapestry of influence and history, whether it’s from Asian or Jamaican or Caribbean heritage,” she said. “She has firsthand lived experience of being able to relate to the world, not just our immediate country.” 

Like Alexis, who aims to draw confidence from Harris being at the top of the decision making hierarchy in the country, Somers too thinks Harris’ rise in the political world would give other young women of color inspiration to go out there and achieve their dreams. 

“Having someone like that at the helm lead in the country again, will make little Gails out there feel like that’s a possibility,” she said. 

And what’s motivating these women to go to the polls this season? 

The excitement of electing the first ever woman of color president of America.

And because “people should be inspired and motivated to vote in every election,” Somers said.