Kamala Harris: Why her famous sorority hasn’t endorsed her.

When Kamala Harris launched into the race for president in July, the leaders of the Black sororities and fraternities known as the Divine Nine issued a statement vowing "to meet this critical moment in history with an unprecedented voter registration, education and mobilization coordinated campaign."

They pledged that their organizations—which include Harris' sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha—would "activate the thousands of chapters and members in our respective organizations" and that they would work "to ensure strong voter turnout in the communities we serve."

That kind of enthusiastic boost would be valuable for any candidate. But the statement was missing something conspicuous: Nowhere was there mention of Harris' name.

When it comes to getting involved in elections, fraternities and sororities are in a bit of a tricky spot. As 501(c)(7) nonprofit organizations, they are banned by the IRS from directly endorsing any political candidate for elective public office. Even as Harris' sorority, AKA isn't able to explicitly state that it is excited about the possibility of an AKA occupying the Oval Office.

Instead, AKA is emphasizing its nonpartisan networking, volunteering, and get-out-the-vote efforts. Even though, as individuals, members of the sorority are allowed to openly support Harris, most of the AKAs I talked to wouldn't share specifics about mobilizing on Harris' behalf. Instead, they spoke broadly about how they are organizing around issues that align with Harris' campaign.

In August, the sorority also took the unusual (but not unheard-of or illegal) step of forming a PAC that could contribute directly to Harris' campaign or spend on her campaign's behalf. The way that PACs work offers a loophole: Money raised by this kind of fund comes from voluntary contributions from organization members rather than the organization itself. PAC managers make decisions about what to do with the money in the interest of the organization, separately from the organization.

The AKA PAC has raised $913,351.08, according to a Federal Election Commission filing released Tuesday . Neither the sorority nor Kiahna Davis, a regional director at AKA who is listed as the PAC's treasurer, responded to requests for comment about the PAC.

If the amount of political involvement that's allowed sounds confusing, well, it can be for sorority sisters and fraternity brothers too. In 2014 AKA, along with Delta Sigma Theta and Sigma Gamma Rho (also historically Black sororities), sparked outrage among members when the organization urged them to be engaged in anti–police violence protests in the wake of Michael Brown's and Eric Garner's murders—but not to wear their sorority letters at the protests.

Despite not wanting to—or being allowed to—appear too political, the Divine Nine are, in many ways, political organizations. AKA was created in 1908 by Black women to support and advocate for Black people. AKAs pushed for anti-lynching legislation in the 1920s, were active in the Civil Rights Movement in the '50s and '60s, and helped build schools in South Africa following the end of apartheid. Yes, the sorority is primarily a social network. But part of its mission is creating pathways to leadership for Black women, and by simply existing as an organization of Black women dealing with matters affecting Black people, AKAs never "had the luxury to be just a social group," Deborah Whaley, a professor at the University of Iowa and author of Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities , told me. "If you look at the critical moments in Black cultural history, they've always been involved in a whole host of activist work—some seen on a larger scale, but some not."

Melanie De La Rosa, an AKA who graduated from Spelman College this year, said: "I know I'm in a sorority that is nonpartisan, but it absolutely emphasizes the importance of exercising your right to vote. I'm making sure that not only are you coming with me to the polls, I'm sending you content." Even if she weren't officially canvassing, De La Rosa said, "I'm going to make sure that you're informed on the issues. We're going to talk about these in our social spaces."

In the run-up to the presidential election, members have been reminded by leadership that they have to be careful when speaking for the sorority. So they've had to get creative and straddle the line between being proud members of AKA and a part of the Harris campaign.

"It's been really interesting to see how they've been kind of massaging their way through supporting her without endorsing her as a candidate," said Whaley. "They're doing things like they did in the earliest days, like voter registration, trying to encourage people to vote, and thinking about different ways to donate financially."

Sorority members have also been organizing through other political channels: Keneshia Grant, a political science professor at Howard University, pointed out that although the historic Win With Black Women Zoom, which launched the craze for Zoom fundraisers for Harris in late July, wasn't officially an AKA or a D9 call, many of the women coordinating it and participating were members of D9 sororities. (Grant herself is a Delta.)

The goal of that call had been to raise $1 million in 100 days. Instead, over 40,000 participants raised $1.6 million in under two hours. New York magazine's Rebecca Traister wrote about this call—and the incredible groundswell of support from Black women, who were organized in advance of Biden's exit from the race—as critical to Harris' 2024 campaign: "No one in the party had any real sense of the degree of public support for a Harris presidency until that call with the Black women, whose initial gathering at that crucial moment, when the party could have gone in another direction or fractured into a million pieces, instead surprised everyone with its urgency and force and piles of money."

In other words, AKA's support of Harris may not always be coming out of the official organization. But AKA is advancing her case at every possible turn, especially in the final weeks of the campaign. Because Harris is a manifestation not just of AKA's mission to get Black women into leadership roles—but of the possibility that a sorority member could assume the highest level of public leadership in the country.

"These organizations have been involved in politics—in Black politics, in women's politics—since their founding," said Grant. "If this organization did not do something sort of above and beyond to support this member, I think that would beg more questions."