Kamala Harris to spend election night at 'Black Harvard' campus

The Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris will be watching the election night of November 5 from the campus of Howard University, which has been called "one of the most important aspects" of her life by Harris.

Nicknamed "the Black Harvard," the Washington school occupies a central role in the US vice president's biography. Since graduating there in 1986, she has frequently returned at key moments.

In 2019 as a candidate in the Democratic presidential primaries, the vice president said, "It (Howard University) is where I first ran for my first elected office as a student council representative. So this is where it all began."

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Harris' presence at the university on Tuesday night, when she could become the first Black woman to be elected US president, is thus deeply symbolic.

Significance of Howard University

The US Congress founded Howard in 1867, two years after the Civil War had put an end to slavery in the mostly Southern states where it remained legal.

The school took its name from Oliver Howard, a Northerner known as "the Christian general" who had promoted higher education for freed slaves.

Howard has built a reputation as one of the best of the roughly 100 institutions known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which draw mostly Black and minority students.

The campus of Howard, which has around 11,000 students, features several imposing red-brick buildings with traditional white columns arrayed around a large central lawn commonly known as The Yard.

It was in an amphitheatre there that, in mid-August, Kamala Harris prepared for her lone debate against Republican rival Donald Trump, telling students that someday, "you might be running for president of the United States."

(With inputs from agencies)