ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
At Howard University in the 1980s, many students arrived on campus with an intense feeling of purpose.
JILL LOUIS: We were highly focused on the impact that we could have. We were the first generation to have the opportunities provided by not being born into legal segregation.
SHAPIRO: Jill Louis, class of '87, says in those days, students at the historically Black university actually dressed up to go to school, including her sorority sister Kamala Harris. Louis joined Alpha Kappa Alpha her junior year, at the same time Harris was joining her senior year.
LOUIS: Kamala carried a briefcase, and that was not deemed to be an odd thing.
SHAPIRO: An undergraduate with a briefcase.
LOUIS: She would not be alone, and it would not be deemed to be odd because we were about our business, the business of achieving that education and being able to move forward.
SHAPIRO: Louis is now an attorney in Dallas, and her sorority sister is the vice president, who also has the shortest presidential campaign runway in modern U.S. history while the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has been in the national spotlight for decades. So all week, we've been talking with people about Harris' life before she became a senator in a series called I Knew Her When.
Harris' racial identity is in the spotlight this week after Trump falsely said Harris only recently started to identify as Black. I spoke with Louis before Trump made those remarks, and she told me, as a college student, Harris often joined protests against apartheid rule in South Africa.
LOUIS: She was very active. She didn't lead them. She wasn't one of the people sort of standing on the podium, but we all participated in the ways that we could, some just by becoming educated in it, and some by actually going down to the embassy and protesting.
SHAPIRO: I'm curious. Within any protest, there are going to be the people who politely stand with a sign and the people who, I don't know, fire a paintball gun or something like that. Which end of the spectrum was she on?
LOUIS: We are, let's politely hold a sign and have our message. Because she is always about the rule of law. We weren't there to be disruptive or defacing or to be outside the bounds of expressing our constitutional rights. And we had parents who would say, we didn't send you there to get arrested. We sent you there to get your education.
SHAPIRO: And so having come from a Berkeley neighborhood that included families of many cultures and then moved to Montreal, where she was one of few nonwhite students at her high school, what was her life like in this Black mecca of Howard University?
LOUIS: She fit right in. Because you have to realize that we're not a monolith either. We are a diaspora. You meet people today who come from an East Indian background who say, oh, my father went to Howard. He studied engineering there. He studied medicine there. People who were members of the Divine Nine fraternities and sororities who came from all over the world and were not necessarily a part of the exact descendants of those who had been African Americans on American soil. So she fit right in.
SHAPIRO: I read an article that said she would hang out at a spot called the Punchout.
LOUIS: Yes.
SHAPIRO: What does that mean to you?
LOUIS: OK, so the Punchout was an amazing place of gathering. So you go into the main student center. You go downstairs, so it has a little bit of a pub quality. And you go in, and around the walls at that time were all the shields of the sororities and fraternities. And so you would typically go and sit near one of those if you were a member because all of the people would then congregate. So you could feel a sense of belonging immediately.
SHAPIRO: No, but I heard that you could tell the cool kids from the less cool kids by whether they ate at the Punchout or in the cafeteria.
LOUIS: I never stepped foot in the cafeteria.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) So you were a cool kid.
LOUIS: I guess. I was really a kid who rebelled against all things cafeteria because after, you know, 12 years of education from first through 12th, I just thought that cafeterias were pretty gross. But the Punchout was fun.
SHAPIRO: So if the Punchout was a place where people did stand-up comedy or DJ sets or whatever it was, what was Kamala Harris doing there?
LOUIS: She was a Kappa Sweetheart. And so what I will tell you that Kappa Sweethearts did while we were there is we would go sit among the group that were part of that fraternity and part of the organization. And people would collect, and we would laugh and tell stories and just really enjoy the fellowship of being college students.
SHAPIRO: What was sorority life with her like? What did she tend to do for the sorority?
LOUIS: So she graduated shortly after we were initiated, so we only had kind of our last few months on campus where we would put together service projects and things like that.
SHAPIRO: Do you remember a specific service project she organized?
LOUIS: So when you say she organized, I think we sort of organize those as a group. So I can speak to - oh, my God. This one was during the time that we were initiates, but we were charged with being able to put these kinds of programs together. And so literally on, like, 24- to 48-hours' notice, they said, oh, we've actually arranged for you all to go and put on a presentation at a local retirement home. And we expect it to be excellent because that's what we expect. And when you show up at 8 a.m. tomorrow, please be ready to demonstrate.
SHAPIRO: And how'd it go?
LOUIS: And it was midnight. It went spectacularly.
SHAPIRO: What'd she do?
LOUIS: So I think she was in the group because we had kind of a singing aspect. And the other thing, it was important to do things as a group. And this, I think, is telling because this tells you a little bit about who she is in that 38 people. All different talents - I don't think we have a whole lot of shrinking violets even among the 38. One of the philosophies is, you're only as good as the worst one. And so making sure not that you shine to outshine others, but that you're actually lifting the performance of the entire group. So there's actually no benefit to saying, well, you know, I'm the best, and I can carry the best tune, but at the same time, supporting the talents of others. And I see that today.
SHAPIRO: I have to ask, is she a good singer?
LOUIS: She can carry a tune.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) That's a little equivocal there.
LOUIS: She can carry a tune.
SHAPIRO: So if I were to ask you to think back to that class of 38 young women at Howard University all inducted into the sorority your year and pick one of the 38 who was most likely to run for president, would you have chosen her?
LOUIS: Not necessarily.
SHAPIRO: Huh. Go on.
LOUIS: And I say that because I have various friends who've said, there may be about, like, five of you. We would include her, but I think it was - perhaps our vision was too limited at that time, and we did not understand everything that would be open to us. And I so compliment her for having a vision bigger than anything that any of us had ever seen.
SHAPIRO: Well, Jill Louis, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for taking the time.
LOUIS: Oh, certainly. Thank you.
SHAPIRO: She is an attorney in Dallas.
And our series, I Knew Her When, was produced by Jonaki Mehta and Marc Rivers. It was edited by Ashley Brown and Patrick Jarenwattananon. Special thanks to KQED's Molly Solomon and NPR's Deepa Shivaram. You can hear all five conversations at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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