WASH­ING­TON — Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris broke the bar­ri­er that has kept men at the top ranks of Amer­i­can pow­er for more than two cen­turies when she took the oath yes­ter­day to hold the na­tion’s sec­ond-high­est of­fice.

Har­ris was sworn in as the first fe­male US vice pres­i­dent — and the first Black woman and per­son of South Asian de­scent to hold the po­si­tion — in front of the US Capi­tol by Supreme Court Jus­tice So­nia So­tomay­or. Lat­er, she presided as Sen­ate pres­i­dent for the first time to swear in three new De­mo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors, in­clud­ing her re­place­ment.

The mo­ment was steeped in his­to­ry and sig­nif­i­cance in more ways than one. She was es­cort­ed to the podi­um by Capi­tol Po­lice Of­fi­cer Eu­gene Good­man, the of­fi­cer who sin­gle-hand­ed­ly took on a mob of Trump sup­port­ers as they tried to breach the Sen­ate floor dur­ing the Capi­tol in­sur­rec­tion that sought to over­turn the elec­tion re­sults. Har­ris was wear­ing clothes from two young, emerg­ing Black de­sign­ers — a deep pur­ple dress and coat.

Af­ter tak­ing the oath of of­fice, a beam­ing Har­ris hugged her hus­band, Dou­glas Emhoff and gave Pres­i­dent Joe Biden a fist bump.

Her rise is his­toric in any con­text, an­oth­er mo­ment when a stub­born bound­ary falls away, ex­pand­ing the idea of what’s pos­si­ble in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. But it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly mean­ing­ful be­cause Har­ris is tak­ing of­fice at a mo­ment when Amer­i­cans are grap­pling over in­sti­tu­tion­al racism and con­fronting a pan­dem­ic that has dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dev­as­tat­ed Black and brown com­mu­ni­ties.

Those close to Har­ris say she’ll bring an im­por­tant — and of­ten miss­ing — per­spec­tive to the de­bates on how to over­come the many hur­dles fac­ing the new ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“In many folks’ life­times, we ex­pe­ri­enced a seg­re­gat­ed Unit­ed States,” said La­teefah Si­mon, a civ­il rights ad­vo­cate and long­time Har­ris friend and mentee.

“You will now have a Black woman who will walk in­to the White House not as a guest but as a sec­ond in com­mand of the free world.”

Har­ris — the child of im­mi­grants, a step­moth­er of two and the wife of a Jew­ish man — “car­ries an in­ter­sec­tion­al sto­ry of so many Amer­i­cans who are nev­er seen and heard.”

Her fam­i­ly joined her on stage as she took the oath and lat­er dur­ing her pro­ces­sion to her new of­fice build­ing near the White House. She was led by her al­ma mater Howard Uni­ver­si­ty’s march­ing band and walked while hold­ing the hand of her grand­niece and along­side her hus­band, stepchil­dren, sis­ter, broth­er-in-law and nieces.

Peo­ple who want to un­der­stand Har­ris and con­nect with her will have to learn what it means to grad­u­ate from a his­tor­i­cal­ly Black col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty rather than an Ivy League school. They will have to un­der­stand Har­ris’ tra­di­tions, like the Hin­du cel­e­bra­tion of Di­vali, Jones said.

“Folks are go­ing to have to adapt to her rather than her adapt­ing to them,” Jones said.