Vice pres­i­dent-elect Kamala Har­ris on Sat­ur­day paid trib­ute to the women, par­tic­u­lar­ly Black women, whose shoul­ders she stands on as she shat­ters bar­ri­ers that have kept most­ly white men entrenched at the high­est lev­els of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics for more than two centuries.

“Tonight I reflect on their strug­gle, their deter­mi­na­tion and the strength of their vision to see what can be unbur­dened by what has been,” Har­ris said, wear­ing a white suit in trib­ute to women’s suf­frage. She called it a tes­ta­ment to Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden’s char­ac­ter that “he had the audac­i­ty to break one of the most sub­stan­tial bar­ri­ers that exists in our coun­try, and select a woman and his vice president.”

“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” Har­ris said in her first post-elec­tion address to the nation.

The 56-year-old Cal­i­for­nia sen­a­tor, also the first per­son of South Asian descent elect­ed to the vice pres­i­den­cy, rep­re­sents the mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism that defines Amer­i­ca but is large­ly absent from Washington’s pow­er cen­ters. Her Black iden­ti­ty has allowed her to speak in per­son­al terms in a year of reck­on­ing over police bru­tal­i­ty and sys­temic racism. As the high­est-rank­ing woman ever elect­ed in Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, her vic­to­ry gives hope to women who were dev­as­tat­ed by Hillary Clinton’s defeat four years ago.

Har­ris told lit­tle chil­dren to “dream with ambi­tion, lead with con­vic­tion, and see your­selves in a way that oth­ers may not sim­ply because they’re nev­er seen it before.” After Biden’s speech, she was joined on stage by her fam­i­ly, includ­ing her two grand­nieces who wore white dresses.

A ris­ing star in Demo­c­ra­t­ic pol­i­tics for much of the last two decades, Har­ris served as San Francisco’s dis­trict attor­ney and California’s attor­ney gen­er­al before becom­ing a U.S. sen­a­tor. After she end­ed her own 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Joe Biden tapped her as his run­ning mate. They will be sworn in as pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent on Jan. 20.

Biden’s run­ning mate selec­tion car­ried added sig­nif­i­cance because he will be the old­est pres­i­dent ever inau­gu­rat­ed, at 78, and hasn’t com­mit­ted to seek­ing a sec­ond term in 2024.

Har­ris often framed her can­di­da­cy as part of the lega­cy of pio­neer­ing Black women who came before her, includ­ing edu­ca­tor Mary McLeod Bethune, civ­il rights activist Fan­nie Lou Hamer and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black can­di­date to seek a major party’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, in 1972.

She paid trib­ute to Black women “who are too often over­looked but so often prove they are the back­bone of our democracy.”

Despite the excite­ment sur­round­ing Har­ris, she and Biden face steep chal­lenges, includ­ing a pan­dem­ic that has tak­en a dis­pro­por­tion­ate toll on peo­ple of col­or, and a series of police killings of Black Amer­i­cans that have deep­ened racial ten­sions. Har­ris’ past work as a pros­e­cu­tor has prompt­ed skep­ti­cism among pro­gres­sives and young vot­ers who are look­ing to her to back sweep­ing insti­tu­tion­al change over incre­men­tal reforms in polic­ing, drug pol­i­cy and more.

Jes­si­ca Byrd, who leads the Move­ment for Black Lives’ Elec­toral Jus­tice Project and The Front­line, a mul­tira­cial coali­tion effort to gal­va­nize vot­ers, said she plans to engage in the rig­or­ous orga­niz­ing work need­ed to push Har­ris and Biden toward more pro­gres­sive policies.

“I deeply believe in the pow­er of Black women’s lead­er­ship, even when all of our pol­i­tics don’t align,” Byrd said. “I want us to be com­mit­ted to the idea that rep­re­sen­ta­tion is excit­ing and it’s wor­thy of cel­e­bra­tion and also that we have mil­lions of Black women who deserve a fair shot.”

Har­ris is the sec­ond Black woman elect­ed to the Sen­ate. Her col­league, Sen. Cory Book­er, who is also Black, said her very pres­ence makes the insti­tu­tion “more acces­si­ble to more peo­ple” and sug­gest­ed she would accom­plish the same with the vice presidency.

Har­ris was born in 1964 to two par­ents active in the civ­il rights move­ment. Shya­mala Gopalan, from India, and Don­ald Har­ris, from Jamaica, met at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, then a hotbed of 1960s activism. They divorced when Har­ris and her sis­ter were girls, and Har­ris was raised by her late moth­er, whom she con­sid­ers the most impor­tant influ­ence in her life.

“When she came here from India at the age of 19, she maybe didn’t quite imag­ine this moment. But she believed so deeply in an Amer­i­ca where a moment like this is pos­si­ble,” Har­ris said Sat­ur­day night.

Kamala is San­skrit for “lotus flower,” and Har­ris gave nods to her Indi­an her­itage through­out the cam­paign, includ­ing with a call­out to her “chit­this,” a Tamil word for a mater­nal aunt, in her first speech as Biden’s run­ning mate. When Geor­gia Sen. David Per­due mocked her name in an Octo­ber ral­ly, the hash­tag #MyNameIs took off on Twit­ter, with South Asians shar­ing the mean­ings behind their names.

The mock­ing of her name by Repub­li­cans, includ­ing Trump, was just one of the attacks Har­ris faced. Trump and his allies sought to brand her as rad­i­cal and a social­ist despite her more cen­trist record, an effort aimed at mak­ing peo­ple uncom­fort­able about the prospect of a Black woman in lead­er­ship. She was the tar­get of online dis­in­for­ma­tion laced with racism and sex­ism about her qual­i­fi­ca­tions to serve as president.

Con­gress­woman Prami­la Jaya­pal of Wash­ing­ton said Har­ris’ pow­er comes not just from her life expe­ri­ence but also from the peo­ple she already rep­re­sents. Cal­i­for­nia is the nation’s most pop­u­lous and one of its most diverse states; near­ly 40% of peo­ple are Lati­no and 15% are Asian. In Con­gress, Har­ris and Jaya­pal have teamed up on bills to ensure legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for Mus­lims tar­get­ed by Trump’s 2017 trav­el ban and to extend rights to domes­tic workers.

“That’s the kind of pol­i­cy that also hap­pens when you have voic­es like ours at the table,” said Jaya­pal, who in 2016 was the first South Asian woman elect­ed to the U.S. House.

Har­ris’ moth­er raised her daugh­ters with the under­stand­ing the world would see them as Black women, Har­ris has said, and that is how she describes her­self today.

She attend­ed Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, one of the nation’s his­tor­i­cal­ly Black col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, and pledged Alpha Kap­pa Alpha, the nation’s first soror­i­ty cre­at­ed by and for Black women. She cam­paigned reg­u­lar­ly at HBCUs and tried to address the con­cerns of young Black men and women eager for strong efforts to dis­man­tle sys­temic racism.

Her vic­to­ry could ush­er more Black women and peo­ple of col­or into politics.

San Fran­cis­co May­or Lon­don Breed, who con­sid­ers Har­ris a men­tor, views Har­ris’ suc­cess through the lens of her own iden­ti­ty as the grand­daugh­ter of a sharecropper.

“African Amer­i­cans are not far removed from slav­ery and the hor­rors of racism in this coun­try, and we’re still feel­ing the impacts of that with how we’re treat­ed and what’s hap­pen­ing around this racial upris­ing,” she said. Har­ris’ can­di­da­cy “instills a lot of pride and a lot of hope and a lot of excite­ment in what is possible.”

Har­ris is mar­ried to a Jew­ish man, Doug Emhoff, whose chil­dren from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage call her “Moma­la.” The excite­ment about her can­di­da­cy extends to women across races.

Friends Sarah Lane and Kel­li Hodge, each with three daugh­ters, brought all six girls to a Har­ris ral­ly in Phoenix in the race’s clos­ing days. “This car is full of lit­tle girls who dream big. Go Kamala!” read a sign taped on the car’s trunk.

Lane, a 41-year-old attor­ney who is of His­pan­ic and Asian her­itage, vol­un­teered for Biden and Har­ris, her first time ever work­ing for a polit­i­cal cam­paign. Asked why she brought her daugh­ters, ages 6, 9, and 11, to see Har­ris, she answered, “I want my girls to see what women can do.”

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Asso­ci­at­ed Press writer Kat Stafford in Detroit con­tributed to this report.