Who are Kamala Harris’ parents? What to know about Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris (2024)

Vice President Kamala Harris has her mother to thank for a quote that's become a popular meme, as she kicks off her campaign for the presidency.

"You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” Harris said at a swearing-in ceremony in May 2023. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you."

In that speech, Harris was quoting her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who would use the "coconut tree" saying to remind a young Harris that she was a product of her surroundings, her parents and the people who came before her.

Harris has spoken over the years about how her parents, and especially her mother, influenced and inspired her to pursue her dreams.

“My mother was the first person to tell me that my thoughts and experiences mattered,” Harris, 59, wrote in a Mother’s Day post on Facebook in 2022. “My mother would often say to me: 'Kamala, You may be the first to do many things. Make sure you are not the last.'"

Harris' distinctive laugh also comes from her mom, she told Drew Barrymore on her show in April 2024.

“I have my mother’s laugh," Harris said. "I grew up around a bunch of women in particular who laughed from the belly. They laughed — they would sit around the kitchen and drinking their coffee, telling big stories with big laughs.”

Read on to learn more about Harris’ parents and upbringing.

Who are Kamala Harris' parents?

Harris, who was recently endorsed by President Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee after he announced his decision to drop out of the presidential race, is the eldest daughter of economist Donald Harris, 85, and breast cancer researcher Gopalan, who died of cancer at age 70 in 2009.

The vice president has shared a handful of throwback photos of her parents on social media over the years, including one of her as a little girl with her mother and her little sister, Maya.

“My mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a scientist who had two goals in life: to cure breast cancer and to raise her two daughters,” Harris wrote in the caption of a March 2024 Instagram post. “As @potus signs a new Executive Order to expand and improve research on women’s health, I am thinking of her.”

Harris' parents were immigrants and met as graduate students

Donald Harris was born in Jamaica, and Shyamala Gopalan was born in southern India.

Their paths converged when they both moved to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

They were both members of a Black intellectual study group, later known as the Afro-American Association, which hosted discussions of African history and the African-American experience, according to The New York Times.

Though not of African origin, Gopalan, as a person of color, was welcomed into the group, former members told the publication in 2020.

“We talked then, continued to talk at a subsequent meeting, and at another, and another,” Donald Harris also told The New York Times, recalling how he formed his relationship with Gopalan in 1962.

In her 2019 memoir, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey," the vice president describes her dad as a “brilliant student.” She also shares how her mother made the unlikely journey from India to Berkeley.

“Like my father, she was a gifted student, and when she showed a passion for science, her parents encouraged and supported her,” Harris writes.

Gopalan earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Delhi at just 19 years old, and went on to earn a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in nutrition and endocrinology at age 25, her obituary reads.

In her book, Harris says her mother’s family had expected her to return to India once she had finished her studies in the U.S., and to have an arranged marriage.

“But fate had other plans. She and my father met and fell in love at Berkeley while participating in the civil rights movement,” the vice president says. “Her marriage — and her decision to stay in the United States — were the ultimate acts of self determination and love.”

Harris says she was raised to appreciate her multi-faceted heritage.

“My mother, grandparents, aunts and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots," she writes in her memoir. "Our classical Indian names harked back to our heritage, and we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture.”

At the same time, she says her mother "understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters" in America.

"She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women," she says.

Her parents were active in the civil rights movement

Harris has said she inherited her parents’ passion for fighting for civil rights and social justice. In her memoir, the vice president says her parents often brought her in a stroller to civil rights marches.

“I have young memories of a sea of legs moving about, of the energy and shouts and chants. Social justice was a central part of family discussions,” she writes.

“My mother would laugh telling a story she loved about the time when I was fussing as a toddler,” she continues. “‘What do you want?’ she asked, trying to soothe me. ‘Fweedom!’ I yelled back.”

Harris says her mom and godmother marched against the Vietnam War and saw Martin Luther King Jr. speak at UC Berkeley.

She adds that she learned from her mother that it “was service to others that gave life purpose and meaning.”

Her parents separated when Harris was young

Harris’ parents married in 1963 and welcomed two daughters: Kamala in 1964 and Maya in 1967.

The vice president shares an early memory of her parents in her memoir, remembering how her dad encouraged her to run and play outdoors.

“He would turn to my mother and say, ‘Just let her run, Shyamala,’” she recalls in the book. “And then he’d turn to me and say, ‘Run, Kamala. As fast as you can. Run!’”

However, within a few years, their union soured.

“In time, things got harder. They stopped being kind to each other. I knew they loved each other very much, but it seemed they’d become like oil and water,” Harris recounts in her memoir. “By the time I was 5 years old, the bond between them had given way under the weight of incompatibility.”

She says they separated around that time, and divorced a few years later.

Harris writes that her father “remained a part of our lives” and says she and her sister would see him on weekends and summers in Palo Alto, California.

However, she says, “it was really my mother who took charge of our upbringing. She was the one most responsible for shaping us into the women we would become.”

Donald Harris opened up about his early memories with his daughters in a 2019 essay for Jamaica Global, recalling a family visit to Orange Hill, Jamaica, in 1970.

“Upon reaching the top of a little hill ... Kamala, ever the adventurous and assertive one, suddenly broke from the pack ... and took off like a gazelle in Serengeti, leaping over rocks and shrubs and fallen branches, in utter joy and unleashed curiosity, to explore that same enticing terrain,” he said. “I quickly followed her with my trusted Canon Super Eight movie camera to record the moment.”

He also opened up about his and Gopalan’s eventual divorce and custody battle.

“This early phase of interaction with my children came to an abrupt halt in 1972 when, after a hard-fought custody battle in the family court of Oakland, California, the context of the relationship was placed within arbitrary limits imposed by a court-ordered divorce settlement based on the false assumption by the State of California that fathers cannot handle parenting,” he said.

However, he said he never gave up “on my love for my children or reneging on my responsibilities as their father.”

Her mother was a breast cancer researcher and her father is a prominent economist

Harris has often spoken with pride about her mother’s work as a renowned breast cancer researcher.

“She had only two goals in life: to raise her two daughters and to end breast cancer,” Harris says in her memoir.

Gopalan received numerous honors for her work as a research scientist. Notably, her discovery related to the hormone-responsiveness of breast tissue led to many subsequent advances, according to Breast Cancer Action.

In a 2020 campaign video, Harris says her mom used to take her and her sister, Maya, to the lab with her on weekends.

Watching her mother work, she says in the video, shaped her own worldview of believing in possibilities, and remaining “unburdened by what has been.”

Harris has opened up about how her mother had to work hard to prove herself as a woman of color with an accent.

“My mother, who raised me and my sister, was a proud woman. She was a brown woman. She was a woman with a heavy accent,” Harris said on the campaign trail in 2020, according to NBC News. “She was a woman who, many times, people would overlook her or not take her seriously. Or because of her accent, assume things about her intelligence. Now, every time my mother proved them wrong.”

Donald Harris, meanwhile, is a prominent economist. He served as a professor of economics at Stanford University from 1972 to 1998, and is now a professor emeritus.

In addition to his academic role, he served as an economic consultant to the government of Jamaica, and as an adviser to multiple prime ministers, according to his Stanford biography.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com