(Jamaica Observer) Tuesday August 11, 2020 will be a date forever etched in the mind of Sherman Harris, a businessman from Orange Hill, St Ann.
It was the day the US Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden announced that he had selected Senator Kamala D Harris as his running mate – a historic moment that marked the first black woman and Asian American woman running for vice-president of the United States of America.
But for Sherman, it is more personal. It is a historic moment that has made his family proud and lifted the spirits of those in Brown’s Town and Orange Hill, St Ann.
Senator Harris is the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris, from India and Jamaica respectively. Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, went to the United States from India to pursue a doctoral degree at the University of California at Berkeley. During that period she met Donald Harris, a fellow student, an economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics.
Sherman is the second cousin to Senator Harris and first cousin to Senator Harris’s father, Donald. Donald’s father Oscar, is Sherman’s uncle.
When the Jamaica Observer visited Sherman at the 150-acre family property in Orange Hill, which now houses the Harris Quarry, family homes and a farm, he beamed with pride as he spoke about the Harris lineage and the family’s commitment to constant development.
“Oscar Harris is my father’s brother, my uncle. That’s Donald’s father, so Kamala is my cousin. We are very proud of her and we know she will bring success. We live as one big Harris family – loving people and so we are very happy and proud of her. I always inspire youth to look up in life and keep progress moving. This is something I was taught growing up on this very land that Kamala’s father was also raised. This will inspire the change. I want to see young people being more progressive, pay attention more and take life more serious. Know what you put in is what you get out. Not much of them know about it so far, because they don’t keep themselves abreast with current news. But I think this may inspire progress in their lives to try and keep the community a little better, to see this is part of Kamala’s heritage,” Sherman told the Sunday Observer.
Apart from the quarry, which employs 15 individuals, cows and goats are raised on the property. There is also fruit and pimento farming, which shows a continuance of the history of the place.
In an article titled ‘Reflections of a Jamaican Father’, Donald Harris wrote that the Harris name came from his paternal grandfather Joseph Alexander Harris, land-owner and agricultural produce exporter of mostly pimento and/or all-spice.
The same article saw the professor emeritus outlining his roots which go back to his paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy, née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown, a plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town; and his maternal grandmother Miss Iris, née Iris Finegan, farmer and educator, from Aenon Town and Inverness, whose ancestry is unknown to him.
Professor Harris, in the article, said in the early years of his daughters Kamala and Maya, through frequent visits to Jamaica and engaging life there in all its richness and complexity, he tried to convey a message to them from the lessons he learnt along the way.
“…My message to them, from the lessons I had learned along the way, was that the sky is the limit on what one can achieve with effort and determination and that, in this process, it is important not to lose sight of those who get left behind by social neglect or abuse and lack of access to resources or privilege; also not to get ‘swell-headed’ [a favourite expression and command of Miss Chrishy]; and that it is important to give back with service to some greater cause than oneself.”
On his visits to Jamaica with children in tow, Professor Harris said they would walk the streets of Brown’s Town during market day, chat up the higglers in the market and were rewarded with plenty of ‘brawta’ in naseberries, mangoes and guinep after each purchase.
Professor Harris also ensured his daughters knew the genesis of his formal education and brought them to see the location of the old Park School Elementary, now the Brown’s Town Comprehensive High School; Titchfield High in Port Antonio and the campus of the former University College of the West Indies, now The University of the West Indies, Mona. His daughters would have also visited the St Mark’s Church and the family property in Orange Hill and the cane fields in Thatch Walk, Aenon Town, where his maternal grandmother Miss Iris had run a thriving business.
But Professor Harris wrote that the 1970 visit to the island is perhaps his most vivid and fondest memory.
“We trudged through the cow dung and rusted iron gates, up hill and down hill, along narrow unkempt paths, to the very end of the family property, all in my eagerness to show to the girls the terrain over which I had wandered daily for hours as a boy (with Miss Chrishy hollering in the distance: ‘Yu better cum home now, bwoy, or else!’). Upon reaching the top of a little hill that opened much of that terrain to our full view, Kamala, ever the adventurous and assertive one, suddenly broke from the pack, leaving behind Maya the more cautious one, and took off like a gazelle in Serengeti, leaping over rocks and shrubs and fallen branches, in utter joy and unleashed curiosity, to explore that same enticing terrain,” he wrote. “I quickly followed her with my trusted Canon Super Eight movie camera to record the moment (in my usual role as cameraman for every occasion). I couldn’t help thinking there and then: What a moment of exciting rediscovery being handed over from one generation to another!”
Furthermore, Sherman said he is very proud of Kamala and described her intellect as second to none.
“She is highly intellectual. She is probably God’s eye when it comes to knowledge. She’s a very fast thinker in every aspect of life. She is not just a normal human. She’s a very fast thinker to any situation — just like her father and her mother. It’s two good brains combined. Her mother was a great researcher of breast cancer and she discovered a lot of things in the world that caused breast cancer. The two brains combined produced Kamala and her sister and they are two ‘brainists’, special ‘brainists’ from God. They are gifted. Anything you ask her about, anything you think about, anything you want to know about, you can just ask her at your fingertips and your answers will be well, well put together. Not much people you can find like that,” Sherman said.
He added: “We are very proud of her, she is a good girl — very intelligent, high in knowledge, (a) very good leader and we know that she is capable of doing the job and will get the job done, and we love her as a member of our family. I am sure Joe Biden will be happy with her and the success and knowledge that she will bring to the table. It will bring a change to the world too. I’m sure of that,” Sherman said.
