Vice President Kamala Harris made history Thursday as the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent in the United States to be nominated to lead a major party’s presidential ticket. We speak with historian Barbara Ransby about two Black women pioneers who helped pave the way for her historic nomination: former Congressmember Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress who sought the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1972, and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who led the fight to desegregate the party’s Southern delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.