David Remnick: You can often hear Kamala Harris on the campaign trail talking about growing up middle class, being raised by a single mom. She talks about a summer job at McDonald's. And Harris talks a great deal, too, about the early part of her career as a prosecutor in California. But there's one aspect of her background that's relatively overlooked, and it's critical to understanding her, Harris's membership in the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, because A.K.A. Is no simple drinking club.

Jazmine Hughes: It is an identity, I would say, probably as important to them-- or, you know, on the same list as their race, their gender, political affiliations, religion, what have you. It is a lifetime commitment. It is a community service organization. It is a secret society. It is Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc.

David Remnick: Jazmine Hughes writes in this week's New Yorker about Alpha Kappa Alpha and its role in shaping the woman who would be the first Black female president. Who were some of the more prominent members of A.K.A.?.

Jazmine Hughes: Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, the first woman elected president of any African nation.

David Remnick: As well as the first Black woman in space, the first Black female bishop. It's a long, long list.

Jazmine Hughes: It's a long, long list. I have a quote from a woman from an A.K.A. in the story saying it's relatively impossible to become the first Black fill in the blank without the backing of a sorority because the networks are so strong, in addition to the camaraderie and the colors and all of that.

David Remnick: How did being a member of A.K.A. shape Kamala Harris's experience of Howard and really, more importantly, the rest of her life?

Jazmine Hughes: So A.K.A. was founded in 1908, right? And in this incredibly difficult, sticky time for African Americans, an organization like Alpha Kappa Alpha was really created out of self-reliance. Black college students were barred from joining white fraternal and sororal organizations, and so they formed their own. While writing this story, I thought a lot about Du Bois and the talented tenth. This idea that 10% of the college educated Black population would work in their communities to sort of uplift the race. That's a really good way to understand A.K.A.

When we look at Kamala Harris as not only a presidential candidate, but as a member of A.K.A., we first and foremost see someone who is supposed to be committed to uplifting Black women, to uplifting the race. I think in one of the bylaws of the organization, truly, it says that the mission of the organization, among many, is to uplift the social status of the Negro, right? And so the reason why I was interested in this story in the first place was that if Kamala Harris does win the presidency, that is sort of literally what A.K.A. was created to do. To like--

David Remnick: This is the ultimate fulfillment.

Jazmine Hughes: This is the ultimate fulfillment. Someone said to me on the record, "Kamala Harris is our ancestors' wildest dreams." The idea that a Black woman could rise to that level obviously comes with some, for lack of a better word, training. And so, one of the focuses of A.K.A. is on-- and all these historically Black fraternities and sororities is on comportment. How to be excellent, how to dress properly, how to comport yourself in public, how to be involved in your community. Basically, it's like a finishing school in some ways that is really steeped in Black self-reliance and brothers and sisters doing it for themselves. It's pretty FUBU, for us, by us.

David Remnick: I found myself moved by some of this, the kind of mentor-mentee relationships that form out of this. You have a woman named Lateefah Simon, who's a congressional candidate from the Bay Area, and she worked under Kamala Harris. What was her impression of Harris and how did A.K.A. figure into it?

Jazmine Hughes: Lateefah Simon gave me this amazing quote. She said, 'When I get an unknown call on my phone, I know it's either student loans or Kamala Harris calling me." Lateefah and Kamala have been friends for over 20 years, and Lateefah really drove home this sense of Harris trying to really instill excellence in her, of trying to bring her up to a level of professionalism.

Whether that meant like buying Lateefah her first suit on her second day of work, as Kamala did not like what Lateefah wore on the first day of work, or even things like "making Lateefah attend college." When Lateefah started working for Kamala Harris, who was then the district attorney, Lateefah was in her mid-20s, had a child, had a MacArthur Fellowship, and Kamala was like, "You still have to go to college and I'm going to be checking on your grades while you're there, while you're working for me."

David Remnick: I think at one point, Lateefah said, "Why are you wearing those pearls?"

Jazmine Hughes: One of the symbols of A.K.A. is the pearl, and there've been all these stories about, "Why does Kamala Harris wear these pearls? Why does she wear the pearls all the time?" It is alongside the ivy leaf, the primary totem, I would say, of the organization, and a subtle way to signal your affiliation. But to be clear, Lateefah loves this. She loved the rigor. She loved the seriousness with which Kamala took her because she said that no one else had ever considered her or regarded her in that way and that it was something that she really needed and appreciated.

That goes back to the sense that A.K.A. is this sort of finishing school, and some people really like that behavior. Others are hairy armed lesbians like myself.

David Remnick: You spoke with a woman named Jolanda Jones, who's a state representative in Texas and A.K.A. She said that she loves the Obamas, but "neither of them were Greek." Then she told you, "Black folks are about to do more for Kamala than we did for Obama." Are we sure that's true? What did you make of what she said?

Jazmine Hughes: I think it's true that certain segments of the Black voting population are more excited for Kamala Harris, because remember the summer--

David Remnick: Than for Obama?

Jazmine Hughes: T than for Obama. I mean, okay, so remember NABJ, Donald Trump, Friends of the Blacks--

David Remnick: National Association of Black Journalists, right?

Jazmine Hughes: Yes. At the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists earlier this summer, Donald Trump insinuated that Kamala Harris turned Black, that she hadn't always identified as such. I think a lot of people just pointed to her time at Howard and her membership in A.K.A. as not only identifying as Black, but like a very specific Black American experience that they did not see or really get from someone like Barack Obama, who grew up in Hawaii, who had-- you know. I mean, Kamala Harris is also biracial, but Barack Obama was raised predominantly by his white mother.

When Barack talks about his sort of Black American experience, in my mind, it's sort of located in Chicago. It's something he comes into as an adult. Whereas Kamala at Howard university at age 18, that's like as Black as spades and stepping and cookouts and greasing your scalp. I think that it means something different, something deeper and something that's more tied obviously to the Black American identity with its roots in the South to see someone like Kamala Harris as opposed to Barack Obama, which is just sort of a different sort of Blackness.

David Remnick: You write that A.K.A. has never endorsed a candidate. Given that it's a nonprofit, it's not supposed to, but we've seen them mobilize to support the Harris campaign. What have they been doing? Are they going to door to door? What kind of numbers are we talking about?

Jazmine Hughes: They're sort of doing what they always do, which is so powerful about A.K.A. is that they're really pounding the pavement and getting people to register to vote, to know the issues, to be able to get to the polls. As voting gets increasingly more difficult in certain places, in certain areas of this country, whether it's ID laws or what have you, I think A.K.A. is really trying to fulfill its mission as a community service organization by taking down as many barriers as possible for people to vote.

Because they are so nonpartisan, many people went out of their way to say, "I don't care who you vote for, as long as you vote." It's really just about, I think, maintaining and respecting the legacy and the hear history of people in the civil rights movement who advocated so strongly for the right for Black people to vote and really making sure that we carry that mission out.

David Remnick: What kind of effect on the race do you think it'll have?

Jazmine Hughes: I think it'll have a sizable one because of this sort of grassroots, boots-on-the-ground approach.

David Remnick: And they're in particular places, the obvious places?

Jazmine Hughes: I mean, they have over 1,000 chapters around the world. They're everywhere. But I think the reason why A.K.A. can be so effective is, again, because they are knocking on doors. They are a very powerful and insistent organization. I think by sheer will and grit, they were making sure that Black people in their neighborhoods, the people in their communities, are going out to vote. We know that Democrats need a huge contingency of Black people to vote for them in order to secure the White House. I think that community organizations like A.K.A. will be much more effective than even the campaign itself just because they're so enmeshed in their community and they know how to get shit done.

David Remnick: We're looking at polls now, and they may turn out to be real or they may turn out to be deluded, in which in a lot of areas, Kamala Harris is doing less well with the Black vote than, forget Barack Obama, but Joe Biden. What do you make of this?

Jazmine Hughes: One thing I am curious about, again, is this identity politic. I was a freshman in college when Barack Obama was elected, okay? It was I wasn't cynical yet, it was like a watershed moment for the Black community. I cried or whatever. I think that that sort of identity politic, although now as a journalist and an adult, I can say that it's corny, but I think that it's really powerful for people. I wonder if Kamala Harris's reluctance to embrace that, at least so far, is causing people not to--

David Remnick: You think it might be a mistake?

Jazmine Hughes: I don't think it's-- I think maybe it's a mistake. I don't think people dislike her. I think maybe they're not as excited for her as they were for someone like Barack Obama.

David Remnick: And that has to do with what?

Jazmine Hughes: Because she's not couching it in the importance of her identity. Because she's not saying, "I will be the first Black female president," in the way that even like a Shirley Chisholm might have.

David Remnick: But I found with Obama, that he had a similar anxiety about talking too much about race, let alone, let's forget the race speech, the moment with Jeremiah Wright and all that. He's right, but I remember interviewing him and I asked him a question about this very thing, and he kind of brushed it off. He gave me some nonsense answer. We're in the Oval Office and da, da, da, it's all very tense. Then he leaves, goes down the hall, and then he comes all the way back like 150 yards and says, in the doorway, and he says, "You got to understand, every time I talk about race, no matter what I say, if one little word is off, it moves the needle in the same way as if I talk about the economy and the effect on the stock market." That it's so complicated, so many different constituencies that you're wary of politically and otherwise. That anxiety is difficult to watch.

Jazmine Hughes: I think that anxiety is very real and I empathize with that. I wonder if the campaign is sort of relying on the Black vote, maybe thinking that they don't have to reach out as much because we see Kamala Harris really trying to go after these sort of independent, middle of the road voters in an attempt to not scare voters out of electing a Black and South Asian woman.

David Remnick: Jazmine Hughes, thank you.

Jazmine Hughes: Thank you.

David Remnick: You can read The Tight-Knit World of Kamala Harris's Sorority by Jazmine Hughes at newyorker.com.

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