Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in Indianapolis
The vice president's visit was part of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated's National Convention in Indianapolis.
INDIANAPOLIS — Vice President Kamala Harris was in Indianapolis Thursday.
Her visit was part of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated's National Convention, which is set to bring 20,000 of its members to Indianapolis this week.
The sorority is one of the country's largest and oldest historically Black sororities.
On July 20, the vice president spoke to more than 7,000 of the sorority's members at a private luncheon.
Harris encouraged the women in the audience to keep fighting, fueled by their love for their children and their country. She told those gathered, "When we fight, we win."
That statement brought cheers from thousands.
"When I look out at all of you, I see family," Harris told a sea of crimson and cream, the sorority's colors.
Harris spoke about the bond she shares with members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated.
"Like my sorority, Delta Sigma Theta was founded to build networks of support for young Black college women, to fortify the bonds of sisterhood, to serve our nation and the world and to create desperately-needed social and legal change," Harris told the crowd.
The vice president is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, the first intercollegiate historically African American sorority and, like the Deltas, one of the Divine Nine, the nine Black Greek letter organizations that make up the National Pan-Hellenic Council, founded in 1930 at Howard University.
Harris spoke to the two sororities' shared history and future, during the Delta's Social Action Luncheon – which focuses on the sorority's legislative priorities and the impact members can have on policy.
When it comes to social action, the Deltas have a long history of being on the forefront.
They were the only African American women's organization to march in the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., lobbying for women's right to vote.
These days, some of the sorority's priorities center around voting and reproductive rights and maternal mortality.
"Before, during and after childbirth, women in America die at a higher rate than in any other wealthy nation in the world, and Black women are three times as likely to die," Harris said.
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Harris also addressed a recent move by the Florida Board of Education about how Black history should be taught in public schools.
That and the number of books banned this year by Florida school districts served as a rallying cry for the vice president.
"Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it," Harris told the crowd.
It was a call to action that members heard.
"It's all about equality and women's rights, and that's what we do, and we'll continue to do that," said Angelina McCarthy-Bryan, a member of Delta Sigma Theta who lives in Virginia.
"We have more work to do," the vice president said.
Harris' stop in Indianapolis is just one of many she'll make this summer on a travel blitz across the country to engage key constituencies. The 2024 presidential election is just down the road, and Thursday, that road ran through Indianapolis.
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