With a simple “So help me God,” Kamala Harris was sworn in as America’s first female Vice President shattering ceilings that had held women down for so long.

Ever since George Washington became the country’s first leader 232 years ago, US power had been held by men.

But yesterday, women were finally were given the representation they were long overdue when Harris took the oath of office serving as President Joe Biden ’s deputy.

In doing so, not only did she become the country’s most powerful female ever, but she also became it’s first Black and first South Asian to hold the role.

Her swearing-in was a historic moment for all American women conducted by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a history-maker herself as the U.S. highest court’s first Latina.

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Kamala Harris bumps fists with Joe Biden after being sworn in (
Image:
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Just hours before taking her oath, Harris paid her respects to women around the world.

“I’m here today because of the women who came before me,” she tweeted.

It was accompanied by a video in which she praised the achievements of women.

In the footage, Harris could be heard repeating her opening remarks after she and Biden were projected as the winners of the presidential elections in November.

Kamala Harris is sworn in as U.S. Vice President as husband Doug Emhoff holds a Bible (
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“To the woman most responsible for my presence here today: my mother, Shyamalan Gopalan Harris, who is always in our hearts.

“When she came here from India at the age of 19, she maybe didn’t quite imagine this moment. But she believed so deeply in an America, where a moment like this is possible,” she said Speaking before her swearing-in, Harris said she would be “thinking about my mother”.

Her mum, Dr Shyamala Gopalan, died of cancer in 2009.

“I’ll be thinking about all those girls and boys,” Harris said then.

Kamala Harris with her husband Doug Emhoff (
Image:
Getty Images)

“You know, before the pandemic struck, fathers and the mothers that would bring them around and say, ‘You know, you can do anything.’ “

“I was raised by a mother who said to me all the time, ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, make sure you’re not the last.’ That’s how I feel about this moment,” the former California senator added.

The vice president, watched by new Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and her family, was sworn in on a bible owned by late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom Harris has called one of her “heroes.”

Kamala Harris today became the first female Vice President in US history (
Image:
Instagram)

She also used a bible owned by Regina Shelton, a family friend.

The Vice President was escorted in the U.S. Capitol by police officer Eugene Goodman, who became a hero two weeks ago after he bravely directed Trump’s MAGA mob away from the Senate during the riot.

Goodman, who is Black, was seen in a video confronting the mostly white mob,

some holding Confederate flags, away from where lawmakers were meeting in the process of certifying the results of the presidential election.

Five people died in the rioting, and Goodman is credited with helping to avert more bloodshed.

Harris wore purple for the ceremony in a nod to Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman to run for president.

Kamala Harris is the first woman to be elected vice president of the United States (
Image:
Getty Images)

The former attorney, who often wears her signature Converse trainers with pearls, wore an outfit by Christopher John Rogers and Sergio Hudson two up-and-coming Black designers.

Following her swearing-in, she wasted no time getting to work taking office as Americans grapple institutional racism and confront the pandemic with disproportionately devastated Black and brown communities.

She moves into the vice presidency just four years after she first arrived in Washington as a senator from California, where she’d previously served as attorney general and as San Francisco’s district attorney.

She had expected to work with a White House run by Hillary Clinton, but Donald Trump ’s 2016 victory quickly upended such hopes.

Her swearing-in comes almost two years after she launched her own presidential bid on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2019.

Her campaign failed to garner the support needed but her star power rose further when Biden chose her as his running mate last August.

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Harris had been a close friend of Beau Biden, the elder son of President Biden and a former Delaware attorney general who died five years ago of cancer.

It is expected Biden will assign a significant portfolio to the former prosecutor which in turn will provide her with the opportunity shape policy that may then become the foundations for her run at the White House.

In the meantime, as the last one in the Oval Office when a major decision is to be made, for the first time a woman, one of colour, will be able to tell a President what she thinks.

Her take on issues will undoubtedly provide a prism never afforded to the White House to look through.

With her celebrity status, she will lead the front line of America’s battle to end racism acting as a bridge-builder.

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As the daughter of immigrant parents, she was born in Oakland, California, in 1964.

Her mother was a cancer researcher who came to the U.S. from India, and her economist father, Donald Harris, was born in Jamaica.

Growing up in the Golden State, she was exposed to activism at an early age by her parents, who were heavily involved in the civil rights movement.

It made her acutely aware of the challenges of dealing with racism.

“My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters,”

Harris wrote in her 2019 memoir The Truths We Hold.

“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.”

Four years of Trumpism has created divisions not seen since the 1960s encouraging a new breed of white supremacists.

Such deaths as George Floyd last year by a white cop and the violent clashes that followed have only exposed how deeply racist America continues to be.

Many experts believe Harris’s long history on criminal justice seen through the eyes of being black and Asian will only serve to create a more equal legal system for Americans.

It will also help to undo many of the racially charged immigration policies brought in by Trump that saw infant children taken from their parents’ arms and placed in cages as they fought for asylum.

In annoying her as his Vice President, Biden said he had every confidence he chose the very best deputy he could.

“Her record of accomplishment - fighting tooth and nail for what’s right - is why I’m choosing her,” Biden said in announcing her as his running mate.

“There is no door Kamala won’t knock on, no stone she’ll leave unturned if it means making life better - for the people.”

Today, Americans are waking up to a new sense of optimism, with many believing it is no longer a matter if but when the free world leader will be a woman.