A story Vice President-elect Kamala Harris told in a months-old magazine interview about her childhood has resurfaced after readers noticed parallels to a story told by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965.
Speaking to Elle magazine for its October cover story, Harris detailed a time when she became separated from her parents at a civil rights march in Oakland, Calif.
At the point in her story when Harris’ parents found their lost daughter, the account begins to sound similar to a tale told by the great civil rights leader.
“My mother tells the story about how I’m fussing, and she’s like, ‘Baby, what do you want? What do you need?’ And I just looked at her and I said, ‘Fweedom,’” Harris told the magazine.
Harris told the same story in the preface of her 2010 book “Smart on Crime,” writing how her mother used to laugh while telling others about the moment. She also referenced it in her 2019 book “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.”
The interview, while months old, resurfaced on Twitter this week when multiple users noticed the uncanny similarities the story had to one told by MLK during a January 1965 interview with Playboy magazine.
In the piece, the civil rights icon recalled a moment he witnessed between a young black girl and a white police officer.
“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 told the magazine.
“‘What do you want?’ the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked at him straight in the eye and answered, ‘Fee-dom,’” he continued…
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