Senator Kamala Harris has been caught in yet another lie, taking a page from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s plagiarism playbook.
In October of 2020, Kamala Harris told Elle magazine about a time that she demanded civil rights when she was in a stroller.
“Senator Kamala Harris started her life’s work young. She laughs from her gut, the way you would with family, as she remembers being wheeled through an Oakland, California, civil rights march in a stroller with no straps with her parents and her uncle. At some point, she fell from the stroller (few safety regulations existed for children’s equipment back then), and the adults, caught up in the rapture of protest, just kept on marching. By the time they noticed little Kamala was gone and doubled back, she was understandably upset. ‘My mother tells the story about how I’m fussing’ Harris says, ‘and she’s like, ‘Baby, what do you want? What do you need?’ And I just looked at her and I said, ‘Fweedom,‘” Elle’s glowing profile on the candidate read.
When the interview began circulating on Twitter again on January 4, Maclean’s contributing editor Andray Domise noticed the similarities between Kamala Harris’ story and a story told by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in an interview with Playboy in 1965.
In an interview with Alex Haley, King discussed the Civil Rights Movement, referencing the inspiration he received from a little girl:
“I never will forget a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother. ‘What do you want?’ the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked him straight in the eye and answered, ‘Fee-dom.’ She couldn’t even pronounce it, but she knew. It was beautiful! Many times when I have been in sorely trying situations, the memory of that little one has come into my mind, and has buoyed me,” King said.
So it turns out Kamala Harris lifted her "Fweedom" story from a 1965 Playboy interview with Martin Luther King, by Alex Haley. Much thanks to @EngelsFreddie for spotting the similarityhttps://t.co/zDONW4Ueqs pic.twitter.com/yQuWZHYEMz
— Q. Anthony (ɔpɛ asem) (@andraydomise) January 4, 2021
Kamala Harris’ running mate, Joe Biden, has been caught plagiarizing on multiple occasions, and it seems like Harris has decided to follow in his footsteps.
This isn’t the first time that Harris has tried to profit politically from stories about her involvement with the Civil Rights movement. During the Democrat primary, she tried to use it as a weapon against Joe Biden.
In June of 2019, Harris called out Joe Biden on the debate stage for opposing forced busing, the forced integration of public schools through busing that occurred decades ago. In her line of attack, she also brought up that he worked with notorious segregationists like former Democrat Senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia.
“It was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day,” Harris said.
“That little girl was me,” she added, while her campaign immediately tweeted a childhood photo of her in pigtails, staring intensely at the camera.
There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/XKm2xP1MDH
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 28, 2019
Before the end of the debate, Kamala Harris’ campaign had already begun selling $30 t-shirts with the image of her on it.