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Forced by a pandemic and fears of domestic terrorism to remain apart — from the U.S. Capitol and from each other — Americans found new ways to celebrate the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday, turning to Zoom and social media and scaling back in-person parties.
In suburban Detroit, Alison Vaughn organized a small watch party for her 9-year-old daughter and other young Black girls so they could witness Harris become the the first woman, first Black and first South Asian American vice president.
Due to Covid-19, Vaughn limited invitations to just six girls but she hoped many more Black girls and women would be watching.
“The theme is ‘I could be next,'” Vaughn said. She included a photo of a young Harris in pigtails on the invitations. “At one point, being president or vice president for a Black person was just totally unheard of. Now my daughter can see that ‘I can do this. I can be next.’ I want her to witness history in the making.”
Vaughn, the CEO of a Detroit workforce development organization called Jackets for Jobs that provides employment training and professional attire to struggling Detroiters, is a member of the same sorority as Harris and said she met her once at an NAACP event in Detroit.
She planned to serve ice cream, one of Biden’s favorite foods, and French fries, one of Harris’ favorites.
“It’s going to be an electrifying, inspiring day,” she said.
Many women celebrated Harris by wearing Converse Chuck Taylor All Star shoes and strings of pearls. Harris is a member of the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, whose members are called “pearls.”
Daisia Davis, who attends Jackson State University in Mississippi, planned to spend Inauguration Day in her dorm wearing pearls and dressed in pink. Her outfit and accessories were a homage to her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, and Harris.
The senior, who also serves as Miss Jackson State University, volunteered at voter registration drives on campus and cried when the presidential election was called for Biden. Davis pointed out that Harris, who attended Howard University, will be the first graduate of a historically Black university to serve as vice president. Jackson State University is an HBCU as well.
Davis said she hoped Harris’ swearing-in would silence notions that HBCUs were somehow inferior. “In the past, you would see HBCUs getting talked down on a lot,” she said. “What’s the excuse now?”
Wednesday’s festivities took place against a backdrop of deep partisan divide in America — and two weeks after a mob supporting President Donald Trump’s false claims of a corrupted election stormed and ransacked the Capitol.
About a third of Americans do not believe Biden was legitimately elected, including 70 percent of Republicans, despite a lack of evidence of voter fraud, according to the latest “PBS NewsHour”/NPR/Marist poll.
Worries about possible violence led some educators to decide not to show the inauguration in class Wednesday — at least not live. But Kenneth Bass said he’s shown every inauguration to his students since George H.W. Bush was sworn in the year after he started teaching.
This year was no exception — but it did call for a more careful approach, said Bass, the head of school at Xceed Preparatory Academy’s Weston Campus in South Florida.
“Emotions are very high,” Bass said. “We’ve never had a more polarized country in my lifetime.”
Some of his students in the middle and high school would gather in masks in classrooms while others will watch a livestream of the inauguration and then discuss Biden’s inaugural address.
“The objective is for them to know what the heck is going on, why we’re doing this, what is an inauguration and what is this in the context of our history,” Bass said.
And if violence arises or something goes wrong, he said, he’ll discuss that with his students.
“You can’t hide life,” he said.
In the minutes leading up to Biden’s swearing in, Democrats from Michigan’s Oakland County toasted the moment together.
“This is a day of celebration, a day when we pat ourselves on the back,” county executive Dave Coulter told several dozen Democrats gathered on Zoom, adding that everyone on the call had “done something over the course of the last four years to help get us where we are.”
Oakland County, just north of Detroit, played a key role in helping Biden reclaim Michigan for the Democrats in November. County voters narrowly backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 but came out in much higher numbers for Biden, giving him 100,000 more votes than Clinton.
“Today we turn a new page,” Coulter said, inviting the group to stay after the inaugural address to dance along with a local band that was scheduled to play.
They watched as Biden he took the oath of office, smiled, clapped and gave thumbs-ups.
CORRECTION (Jan. 20, 2021, 12:23 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the first name of a Jackson State University student. She is Daisia Davis, not Daisa.
Mike Hixenbaugh contributed.
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