California Sen. Kamala Harris says she was bent toward a career fighting for civil rights almost since birth.

The Democrat is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who met at the University of California, Berkeley, and were active in the movement during the 1960s.

“I was born realizing the flaws in the criminal justice system,” she told NPR’s Steve Inskeep.

Inspired by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to sit on the nation’s highest court, she pursued a career in law to help right the wrongs she saw. That ambition would eventually take her from the San Francisco district attorney’s office to the California attorney general’s office to the Senate. Now she hopes it will take her to the White House. She’s seeking to not only become the first woman to be president, but the first black woman.

In Her Pitch For President, Kamala Harris Focuses On Criminal Justice, Inequality

Photo: Olivia Sun/NPR