As a student at Washington D.C.’s Howard University in the 1980s, Harris pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the country’s first Black sorority that was founded at Howard in 1908, and she has since described her fellow sorority members as her family. Between the early to mid-1900s, Black college students created a network of sororities and fraternities known as the “Divine Nine.” These groups have become lifelong networks for many members and have been a driving force for politics in the country. For an organization first founded as a way to subvert exclusion from mainstream collegiate institutions, it is notable that one of their members will now occupy one of the country’s most powerful seats, in the nation’s highest institution. Read more here.