An anecdote shared on a number of events by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris about her reply to the query, “What would you like?” as a toddler was plagiarized from a 1965 interview with Martin Luther King Jr.
Harris has repeatedly shared this anecdote she stated she heard from her now-deceased mom: When requested, “What would you like?” as a toddler, Harris supposedly stated, “Fweedom.” King recounted an analogous story in an 1965 interview with Playboy Journal. Harris stated she doesn’t bear in mind the alleged incident herself. There is not any proof to independently confirm whether or not it really occurred or whether or not Harris (or her mom) plagiarized it.
Within the weeks earlier than the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris’ political opponents resurfaced accusations that she plagiarized a narrative initially shared by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965. Per the claims, she shared the allegedly stolen anecdote on a number of events — together with whereas writing her 2009 ebook “Smart on Crime.”
As an example, an October 2024 clip by the UK-based streaming channel TalkTV stated Harris is “accused of plagiarizing a narrative from Martin Luther King within the ebook that helped launch her political profession, ‘Good on Crime: A Profession Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.'”
Did Harris plagiarize King? The reply is difficult. Whereas it’s true that their tales are comparable, her anecdote was instructed to her by her mom, as Harris describes it.
Amongst locations Harris shared the in-question story was a 2020 interview with Elle Journal. That publication wrote:
[Harris] laughs from her intestine, the best way you’d with household, as she remembers being wheeled via an Oakland, California, civil rights march in a stroller with no straps together with her mother and father and her uncle. In some unspecified time in the future, she fell from the stroller (few security rules existed for youngsters’s gear again then), and the adults, caught up within the rapture of protest, simply saved on marching. By the point they seen little Kamala was gone and doubled again, she was understandably upset. “My mom tells the story about how I am fussing,” Harris says, “and she or he’s like, ‘Child, what would you like? What do you want?’ And I simply checked out her and I stated, ‘Fweedom.'”
A long time earlier, in a 1965 interview with Playboy author Alex Haley, King stated:
I by no means will overlook a second in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a bit Negro woman, seven or eight years previous, who was strolling in an illustration together with her mom. ‘What would you like?’ the policeman requested her gruffly, and the little woman seemed him straight within the eye and answered, ‘Charge-dom.’ She could not even pronounce it, however she knew. It was lovely!
It is true that Harris has instructed the “Fweedom” story on a number of events. The earliest reported occasion was in a 2004 interview with W Journal.
It is also true that the anecdote seems within the preface to her 2009 ebook “Smart on Crime.” In that case, she omitted the element concerning the incident supposedly occurring at a civil rights rally. The ebook states, “My mom used to snigger when she instructed the story concerning the time I used to be fussing as a toddler: She leaned right down to ask me, ‘Kamala, what’s fallacious? What would you like?’ and I wailed again, ‘Fweedom.'”
She referenced the story in the identical manner on page 8 of her 2019 ebook, “The Truths We Maintain: An American Journey,” in addition to in a 2019 interview with Jimmy Fallon and interview on CSPAN.
In all instances, Harris described the story as one thing she heard from her mom, who died in 2009. Harris claims to haven’t any direct recollection of the second. Moreover, there isn’t a option to decide whether or not her mom pulled the anecdote from King’s 1965 interview.
In mid-October 2024, Harris’ marketing campaign rejected broader accusations of plagiarism in her 2009 ebook. A marketing campaign spokesperson instructed The Washington Post, “It is a ebook that is been out for 15 years, and the Vice President clearly cited sources and statistics in footnotes and endnotes all through.”
Snopes reached out to the Harris marketing campaign to particularly ask concerning the story that is much like King’s. The marketing campaign declined to remark.
