How her mother, who crossed seven seas alone at 19, shaped Kamala Harris

In Kamala Harris's South Asian identity, her mother Shyamala Gopalan is always present. The night of the Democratic Convention was no different. Harris recalled how her mother immersed her in -- Indian culture and social activism.

"My mother was 19 when she crossed the world alone, travelling from India to California with an unshakeable dream," Harris said in her DNC speech. "She taught us to never complain about injustice but to do something about it."

KAMALA HARRIS AND HER MOTHER SHYAMALA GOPALAN

Gopalan was born and brought up in the Indian city of Chennai. A grandfather was a civil servant and contributed to India's freedom struggle from the British. Gopalan was also similar when it came to activism.

She moved to the Bay Area at the age of 19 and studied at the University of California, Berkeley. Here, she would become a part of the Civil Rights Movement.

Gopalan had achieved a doctorate by age 25 and became a breast cancer researcher. She met Harris' father, Donald Harris, at Berkeley, whom she married in 1963 and divorced in 1971.

Harris has discussed how, despite her mother's accomplishments, she had to face racism at many points in her life.

"My mother was a brilliant 5-foot-tall brown woman with an accent," Harris said in her speech. "As the eldest child, I saw how the world would sometimes treat her. But my mother never lost her cool."

MOTHER HARRIS AND HER VALUES WHICH POWERED KAMALA

Other family members of Harris also mentioned "Mother Harris."

“Kamala and I each pursued different legal careers, but we were motivated by the same values: a belief in equal opportunity, a yearning for fairness, a passion for justice,” he said, “values ‘Mother Harris’ taught those two little girls, values that powered Kamala’s public service from the very beginning," said her sister Maya Harris' husband, Tony West.

Democrats like Hillary Clinton have also invoked Harris and her mother and even her own mother.

“My friends, the future is here,” Hillary said. “I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see us. They would say, ‘Keep going.’”

Her mother is also the source of the famous coconut tree reference by Harris.

“She would say to us: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,’” Harris said last year, which led to several memes and posts.

This invoking of parents and family is not new to politics.

"A lot of voters respond to this idea that parents, or a mother in particular, have handed down a set of values, and that those values are embedded in the American story, and those are the values that the would-be president is fighting for,” Matthew Dallek, a political historian from George Washington University told NYT. “It does the work for them of saying: ‘I am one of you.’”