Kamala Harris continues her streak of applauding many ‘firsts of America’

Democrat Kamala Harris will be sworn in as the first female, first Black and first South Asian Vice President of the United States on Wednesday by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice in the country’s Supreme Court, ABC News reports. Harris has chosen to be sworn in using two bibles – one that belonged to her ‘second mother’ Regina Shelton and the second one to civil rights icon and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall.

The night of Kamala Harris’ victory speech saw her spell the words that inscribed themselves into the history of a country, which is yet to see female President. Harris, 58, weaved in an adage from her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris had earlier said, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last.”

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No wonder it will be the first Hispanic on the US Supreme Court bench to felicitate a historic moment as Harris takes the oath on January 20. The vice president-elect was inspired by Justice Sotomayor’s background, ABC News reported, days before the presidential inauguration. Drawing parallels – both of them have previously served as state prosecutors, Harris in California and Sotomayor in New York. Sotomayor, 66, is also the third female justice in US Supreme Court history.

Harris and her sister Maya often visited Shelton’s house after school while their mother was still at work as a breast cancer researcher. According to CNN, the former senator also used Shelton’s bible to take the oath of office to be attorney general of California.

The second Bible, which Harris will use to take her oath, belongs to Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights icon and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court, her aide told ABC. Kamala has often called Marshall one of the inspirations for her legal career and has described him as her ‘childhood hero’. She has said in a video posted to Twitter in July, “Thurgood Marshall and the work that he did is … really one of the main reasons I wanted to be a lawyer. Thurgood was a fighter, he was a boxer in the courtroom.”

President-elect Joe Biden and Harris will take their oaths of office on the West Front of the US Capitol during a significantly scaled-down event on January 20.