Kamala Harris Accused of Plagiarizing Martin Luther King Jr.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ childhood story calling for “fweedom” amidst the backdrop of a civil rights march in the turbulent 1960s sounds remarkably familiar to an anecdote from Martin Luther King Jr.’s childhood.

King told his story in 1965. Harris’ recounted her almost identical experience to Elle Magazine on the eve of the election, which has finally prompted allegations of plagiarism.

Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn reports on the details of the contentious story originally published in Elle:

“Senator Kamala Harris started her life’s work young,” writer Ashley C. Ford led off the piece. “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 … 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 told the magazine. “And she’s like, ‘Baby, what do you want? What do you need?’ And I just looked at her and I said, ‘Fweedom.’”

After the interview resurfaced Monday, Twitter user @EngelsFreddie and Andray Domise, contributing editor of the Canadian publication Maclean’s, noted that Harris’ story resembled one told by King in a 1965 interview published in Playboy.

“I will never 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,” King said at the time. “‘What do you want?’ the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked at 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.”

Journalists from across the ideological spectrum accused Harris of co-opting King’s heartfelt story.

The post Kamala Harris Accused of Plagiarizing Martin Luther King Jr. appeared first on American Action News.



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