A little-noticed anecdote that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) told Elle in October has gone viral, thanks to its fantastical premise that she was a civil rights champion even as a small child, and it is likely cribbed from a story recounted by Martin Luther King Jr.
In October, Elle published this passage:
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.’”
That ripping good yarn bears a striking resemblance to a portion of a Playboy interview with Martin Luther King, Jr., from January 1965.
