Kamala Harris marked the end of her vice presidency with a tradition at the White House as she signed her name onto a ceremonial desk that has been signed by every vice president since the mid-1900s.
In her ceremonial office inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building just across the street from the White House, Harris added her signature to the desk’s top drawer. The historical desk, first used by former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, has been used by several U.S. presidents, including William Taft, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Harry Truman.
According to the White House, the desk was used by all subsequent vice presidents except Hubert Humphrey, beginning with Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice presidency. Carrying on the modern tradition of signing the desk, Harris joined Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and dozens of current and former staff members to mark the historic moment.
As the first woman and first Black woman to serve as U.S. vice president, Harris’ signature also marks the first time that a woman’s signature has been added to the 123-year-old desk.
“The ceremony of signing this desk is something that is especially important,” said Harris in a packed room with staff and members of the press, including theGrio. “I will say that although many of us might have disagreed — me and some of the previous vice presidents — on certain matters, policy matters. I think we all probably have shared a very common experience that is a through line.”
The vice president continued, “It is the work of understanding we hold these offices in the public trust with the duty and the responsibility to uphold the oath we take to respect, to defend the Constitution of the United States, to do our work on behalf of the people of the United States.”
She added, “I stand in a long tradition as the 49th vice president of the United States, in a long tradition of vice presidents who have signed this desk, and I do so with great honor and with the knowledge that our work here has mattered.”
Of course, Harris and the room of staffers and supporters hoped that this historic event marking the end of her vice presidency would also have marked the beginning of her term as the first woman president of the United States had she won the 2024 election against now President-elect Donald Trump.
Acknowledging that reality, Harris assured her team, “It is not my nature to go quietly into the night, so don’t worry about that.”
True to her “joyful warrior” brand, Vice President Harris used her final official act as vice president to thank her staff and encourage them to continue the work they did over the past four years.
“I’m not going to go through the laundry list of all of our accomplishments — we know what they are — but I will tell you that everyone here has so much to be proud of, and our work is not done,” she said.
Harris recalled the many people over the country who thanked her for her service as vice president. However, she told her staff, “I am fully aware that when they are thanking me, they are thanking our team for the extraordinary commitments that you each have and as a team have to lifting up the American people, lifting up their conditions, lifting up their hopes and dreams and understanding through it all, the nobility of public service.”
She concluded, “We have each taken on a life and a calling that is about doing work in the service of others and doing it in a way that is fueled, yes with ambition, yes with a sense of almost stubbornness about not hearing no and knowing we can make a difference.”
At the end of the signing event, Harris, who will attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday, Jan. 20, was asked by a reporter what’s next for her as she prepares to leave office.
“We’re going to continue to getting work done until Monday and then, I’ll keep you posted,” she said to laughs in the room.
