Shyamala was born on December 7, 1938, in Madras, Madras Province, British India (present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu, … See more

Shyamala conducted research in UC Berkeley's Department of Zoology and Cancer Research Lab. She worked as a breast cancer researcher at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Wisconsin. … See more

In the fall of 1962, at a meeting of the Afro-American Association—a students' group at Berkeley whose members would go on to give structure to the discipline of Black studies, propose the holiday of Kwanzaa, and help es… See more

Shyamala died of colon cancer in Oakland on February 11, 2009, at age 70. She requested that donations be made to the organization Breast Cancer Action. Later in 2009, Kamala Harris carried her mother's ashes to … See more