At a DC bar full of Black Hill staffers, the debate was a time for marching orders

Anyone who has questioned Kamala Harris’s racial heritage just needed to spend debate night with Black Capitol Hill staffers.

The debate between the vice president, herself a former member of the Congressional Black Caucus when she was a senator, and former president Donald Trump served as a kickoff for the CBC Foundation’s annual legislative conference.

For the uninitiated, CBC week is a part networking event, part policy summit that turns Washington DC into a block party. It’s not uncommon to see members on the weekend stepping out for a boozy brunch.

Plenty of Black Hill staffers also take part and, at the Park on 14th, a Black-owned restaurant and bar located only two blocks away from the White House, plenty of the Hill’s denizens took a break from avoiding a Republican-induced government shutdown to convene for an event honoring staff on Tuesday night.

Jim Clyburn, the former House majority whip whom many credit for making Joe Biden president when he endorsed him in the 2020 Democratic primary, gave clear marching orders to every member of the Divine Nine sororities and fraternities.

“All of us are AKAs,” he said, in reference to Alpha Kappa Alpha, the sorority Harris joined when she attended Howard University. Harris also served as a point of pride given that not only would she be the first Black woman to become president were she to win, she would become the first alumnus of a historically Black college, Howard University (often called “The Mecca” by alumni and whose mascot is the Bison).

“I feel like it’s on par, this is what we do at the Mecca,” Neosho Ponder, who earned her master’s and doctorate from Howard, told The Independent on Tuesday night.

“And being a part of this, this legacy of Bison that are