Harris abandoned plans to perform at Howard, but her team promised she would return

(This story has been updated to add new information.)

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign will return home to Howard University on Wednesday to speak out about the election that led to Donald Trump’s decisive victory.

The historically black institution was the site of her first political race, the campaign for a freshman class representative that she won—and placed prominently in her bid for higher office.

Harris held a press conference at a private university hours after she launched her 2019 presidential campaign. She returned to school in northwest Washington, D.C., for a rally on the day President Joe Biden announced he was running for re-election with her as his vice president.

And on presidential election night, she invited her oldest friends, current and former students, and longtime supporters to Howard University to watch the election results.

Harris declined to appear Tuesday night at the party, which began with hip-hop and gospel music and a choir singing “Oh Happy Day.” The mood darkened as the evening wore on as the results spelled trouble for Harris in key battleground states. North Carolina was called to Trump.

Instead, Harris’ campaign co-chair addressed the crowd shortly before 1 a.m. Wednesday.

“We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not yet been named. We’ll continue through the night to try to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken,” said campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond. “So you won’t hear from the vice president tonight. But you will hear from her tomorrow, because tomorrow she will return here to address not only the Hu family, not only her supporters, but also the nation.”

Howard alumni, Democratic activists, Biden administration officials and Harris supporters gathered at school yard, where inspirational figures such as the late South African President Nelson Mandela, former US President Barack Obama and talk show host Oprah Winfrey have given speeches over the years, hoping to see Harris perform Tuesday night.

Me’kayla Rothmiller, a 21-year-old student from Miami, Florida, said she was encouraged that an alumna from her university was leading the presidential ticket. But she said: “I’m so nervous, I’m so anxious to see what happens.”

Harris gave Howard’s commencement speech there in 2017 and wore a Howard sweatshirt while working the phone in July after Biden’s abrupt withdrawal from the 2024 race.

When it came time for her debate with Trump later in the summer, she returned to campus for early preparation.

Howard is one of the nation’s most prominent historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. Its alumni include Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, and writers Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, prominent writers of African-American literature.

Students and alumni call this esteemed university a “Mecca” for its leadership in black higher education.

“It’s a belief system that we’ve had at Howard for a very long time,” Jill Louis, a Dallas attorney who pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha at the same time as Harris, said in an interview before the event. “And as a direct sister of Kamala Harris, I have also held a belief system of her greatness from the very beginning of meeting her, throughout her growth and all the different positions she has held.”

Harris received her bachelor’s degree from Howard in 1986. She attended law school in California and served as state attorney general and U.S. senator before being elected vice president.

She would be the first HBCU graduate to become President of the United States. Harris is the first vice president in U.S. history to attend an HBCU.

At the event, Trinity Garrison, a junior from Miami, said Harris’ campaign brought the HBCU community together. “The entire HBCU community, not just Howard,” she said. “It was a little scary at first to put one of our own out there for everyone to nitpick and have an opinion on, but the more we got into the race I think the more we started to find our fire again and it was very inspiring to watch how we all came together to support Kamala and support each other.”

The university moved classes online during election week to make room for its most famous contemporary.

“Tonight, as our nation votes, and we observe the time-honored ritual of our democracy, which includes the right to have our voices heard, the right to express our opinions across the aisles, tonight, as we continue the hard and necessary work of democracy, work that moves our country forward, we at Howard are honored and proud to vote for our graduate and welcome her home,” said Howard University President Ben Vinson III in remarks before the program began.

Harris prepared for a long night and incomplete results

Harris spent part of the day speaking on radio broadcasts on the battlefields. That afternoon, she stopped by the phone bank at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC.

The vice president, who said she ate “a family-sized bag of Nacho Doritos” in 2016 after winning her Senate race and former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton losing the presidency, brought a box of chips with her.

In an August fundraising email, Harris said she had “torn up” her notes and pledged in her victory speech that night to fight Trump.

And for the next eight years she did. First as a senator on the Judiciary Committee, where she challenged his nominees, and later as Biden’s running mate, defeating Trump to become a one-term president.

The results of the 2024 campaign, in which she replaced Biden in a sudden shakeup of the Democratic ticket, were not expected to emerge as quickly as they did.

Before the event, her campaign warned that by the end of Tuesday evening she could produce only partial results in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona, three swing states that could determine the outcome. But the fact that the campaign said Harris planned to address the nation the next day suggests her aides are not hopeful.

Before the race was called, Rothmiller said that whether Harris wins or loses, she would be excited to be a part of history. “The fact that she’s even there, or even came that close, it’s like gosh, maybe I can go up there one day too. Or maybe, if not me, my sisters will be able to get there one day too,” she said. “Just knowing that we’ve finally made it this far in history is like wow, what a time to be alive.”