Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the descendants of some of the most prominent civil rights leaders from the 1950s and ’60s and other foundational historic figures, who gathered at the White House on Tuesday, some convening in the same room for the first time.
The families of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Emmett Till, and Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, among others, were scheduled to attend.
Harris praised the descendants of “extraordinary American heroes” who, she said, embody the promise of the nation and the Constitution.
“They’ve passed the baton to us,” Harris said Tuesday.
Stephen K. Benjamin, the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, followed Harris to recap the administration’s initiatives, including an executive order tied to police accountability and Joe Biden’s signing the law to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
The Descendants, as the group calls itself, paid homage to their familial legacies as they celebrated the Black History Month event hosted by the Biden-Harris administration.
Joshua Jordison, one of the behind-the-scenes coordinators for The Descendants, said discussions to bring this group together began several years ago.
“It was amazing that many of them had never met,” he said in the days leading up to the event.
Invitations went out to other notable families, organizers said, although some were unable to attend due to scheduling and other factors.
“We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us,” said Kenneth B. Morris Jr., a descendent of Frederick Douglass and his first wife, Anna Murray Douglass. “Freedom’s torch has been passed to us.”
Ahead of the event, Morris told NBC News that this historic event was just the beginning for these families, whose goal is to “catalyze transformative positive societal change amongst the most significant challenges faced by our country.”
Morris is also a descendant of Booker T. Washington,…
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