Harris to be sworn in by Justice Sotomayor using Thurgood Marshall’s Bible

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be sworn into office by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on a bible that once belonged to first the African American to serve on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall, a source familiar with the plans told The Hill. 

Harris has credited both justices as inspirations for her career. 

Harris chose Sotomayor, the high court’s first Latina member, because she was inspired by her background in civil rights as well as her past work as a prosecutor, an experience they both share, the source said. 

Before becoming the first Black American and woman to serve as California’s attorney general in 2011, Harris served as district attorney of San Francisco.

In 2017, Harris went on to break another glass ceiling when she became the first Black woman and South Asian American to represent the state in the Senate. She made history again last year she was elected the nation’s next vice president along with President-elect Joe Biden.

Both Biden and Harris will be sworn in on Jan. 20, making Harris the first Black American, first woman and first South Asian American to serve as the country’s vice president. 

The vice president-elect has previously lauded Marshall as one of her biggest heroes.

“Some of my greatest heroes were lawyers: Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, Constance Baker Motley—giants of the civil rights movement,” she wrote in “The Truths We Hold,” a memoir she penned in 2019, according to ABC News.

ABC first reported the news Saturday. 

Harris has also credited Marshall as part of the reason she decided to attend Howard University, a historically Black university where the late justice attended and graduated in 1933. Harris graduated from the school in 1986.

“I wanted to get off on the right foot. And what better place to do that, I thought, than at Thurgood Marshall’s alma mater?” she wrote in her memoir, according to ABC News.

His Bible will be one of two that Harris will use to swear in later this month.

The other Bible that will be used belonged to a woman named Regina Shelton, who was a mother figure to Harris. Harris was close to Shelton’s daughter and foster children, a source told The Hill.

She used the same Bible when she was being sworn in for California attorney general and the U.S. Senate.