Yesterday I wrote a story about the completely unbelievable story told by Kamala Harris to Elle Magazine about being a toddler who fell out of a stroller at a civil rights march and then, when asked what she wanted, said all she wanted was “fweedom.”
Well, buckle up because there’s an interesting update to the story.
Kamala Harris plagiarized the whole thing.
She straight up stole the story from a Martin Luther King Jr. interview with Alex Haley from 1965.
Right down to the adorable mispronunciation of the word “freedom.”
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
Here’s the story from the original Alex Haley interview with King back in 1965.
“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.”
Now here’s the Kamala story, as a comparison.
“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.””
Hmm. Eerily similar. Little girl at a civil rights demonstration with her mother. After becoming upset, the girl is asked, “What do you want?” Little girl responds with an adorable mispronunciation of “freedom.”
Kamala Harris seems to have quite a few civil rights stories at the ready to use to her political advantage. Remember in the Democratic primary debate when she criticized Joe Biden for working with a segregationist and opposing bussing, saying,
“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.”
As though she had planned it head of time (because she probably had), her campaign immediately released a photo on Twitter of little Kamala in pig tails, staring directly into the camera, with a caption quoting Kamala’s debate statement.
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 debate was even over, her campaign was selling T-shirts with the pig tail image for $30 a pop.

Because the reality is that civil rights stories sell, whether they’re tru or not. And when the mainstream media backs you completely, you don’t really have to worry about people fact checking or calling you out when you blatantly lie or plagiarize.
And if she’s willing to blatantly lie about something as trivial as a fake childhood story in a puff piece for a pop culture magazine, what else is she willing to lie about?