Kamala Harris, then a young Vice President was attacked by a schoolyard bully when she tried to stand up for her childhood friend.
That childhood best friend, Stacey Johnson Batiste, is releasing a memoir titled Friends From the Beginning: The Berkeley Village that Raised Kamala and Me on growing up in California side-by-side with the future trailblazer.
Batiste wrote in her memoir that Harris’s and her mothers were among the early activists who made Berkeley, California’s ultraliberal, artistic reputation what it is today.
She wrote that Harris and her sister were a happy, loud, vibrant crew. Harris was petite but loomed large in her earliest memories.
Batiste, who was five, and Harris, the vice president, were both five when they met. According to earlier reports, Harris and Batiste were both born in the same Oakland hospital.
DailyMail.com received an exclusive excerpt from the book, which will be published November 16th by 12 Books.
She claimed that their mothers enrolled them at Berkwood Hedge School, which Batiste described was’very progressive, even in that time and place’. It encouraged ‘freedom to express’
She wrote that Kamala and her education began with a vibrant group of students, which provided a solid foundation for understanding the years ahead in Berkeley.
‘When our small class would sit on the floor every morning, gathered for circle time or listening to our teachers read, we resembled some sort of diversity catalog.’

Harris is pictured (left) with Stacey Johnson Batiste, Harris’ childhood best friend. Batiste writes in her book that Harris and Batiste met when Harris was five years old. Harris was four-going on-five at the time.


When Harris was selected to be Joe Biden’s VP Batiste said she cried tears of joy and said of Harris, ‘The person people see and hear is the same person I’ve known since we were five years old’
She stated that there were three other students, a Filipino girl and two black children, as well as a white boy Batiste who she called a “good friend”.
Batiste stated that Harris was the one who taught her how to tell bullies and not be afraid of telling them.
She described a particular incident when children were asked to mold pieces of clay. Batiste called them ‘lumps.
After being baked, Harris and Batiste were ‘admiring their artworks’ when a 5-year-old boy tore the former’s hand off and smashed the piece on the ground.
Batiste wrote that she was shocked and distraught when she saw her shattered work of art. She also recalled the tears welling up inside her eyes.
Kamala came in between me, the boy, and began shouting at him.
Next she said the boy, who appeared ‘stunned’ at the scene, ‘picked up a hardened piece of clay or rock and smashed it on Kamala’s head, just above her eyebrow.’
‘Her forehead started gushing blood, but she didn’t recoil at all. Batiste wrote that instead, she continued to lay into the boy, asking him to apologize.
It went on until Harris was taken to the hospital. Batiste said Harris’ wound was so severe that her mother had to pick her up earlier and get her stitches.
She still remembers Harris’s return to school the next morning, and that the injury would continue for many decades.
“That little boy never bothered us again,” Batiste wrote. Batiste wrote that Kamala still carries a very small, tiny scar just above her eyes.
“Though I was more shaken than she appeared to me by the whole scene, it made me proud in the aftermath, and it still does.

Batiste claims that Harris was left with a scar on Harris’s left eye.
She said the anecdote was one she ‘often mentioned when asked to describe Kamala’s character.’
Batiste described the year that she shared with Harris at Berkwood among her most memorable moments as a child.
She wrote, “Though I have a few fragments of my early childhood memories, Berkwood was where my recollections really begin to crystallize, right around when Kamalaa and I were playing on the playground.”
“We were the most likely to be running and lingering outside on the swings and slides with our friends. As soon as I arrived at school I would try to find Kamala. Although we only spent one year together, my Berkwood memories are very strong. And strongest among them was the sturdy root of having met my first true best friend.’
When members of the media want to know more about Harris’s personal and professional life, Batiste’s name has been mentioned before.
Harris was the first woman and first woman of color to be sworn in as the vice president in US history. She was San Francisco’s first female district attorney and California’s first female, first-black, and first-south Asian American attorney general.
Spectrum News’ Batiste said that Harris’s addition to the 2020 ticket made her cry tears of joy.
‘The person people see and hear is the same person I’ve known since we were five years old,’ she had said of the now-vice president.