Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter takes down Pepsi in one heartbreaking tweet

Her father deserves more.
 By 
Nicole Gallucci
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo

Bernice King isn't having it with that terrible Pepsi commercial either.

With one powerful image of her father, the 54-year-old daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King showed Pepsi just how tone-deaf their commercial featuring Kendall Jenner really is.

The commercial, released on Tuesday, shows a bunch of millennials protesting for some unknown reason, and Jenner managing to bridge the gap between activists and police with a single can of Pepsi.

Bernice had one thing to say in response: "If only Daddy would have known about the power of Pepsi." She paired her message with a black and white image of a police officer with his hand on her father's chest, mid-protest.

Bernice's message is clear: The ad belittles the struggles of civil rights activists like her father to sell soda. Pepsi even released its commercial on the anniversary of her father's death adding more fuel to opponent's fire. The controversial ad sparked outrage across the internet as soon as it went live on YouTube.

Pepsi's commercial, which the company has said it will scrub, shows Jenner cutting a modeling shoot short to join a protest in the streets after a guy nods at her. After she makes her way toward the commotion, she simply stops in front of a police officer, hands him a can of Pepsi, and everyone cheers.

As history has shown Bernice and the rest of the world, that's not a very realistic depiction of a serious conflict being solved.

Others perplexed and dismayed also compared Jenner's Pepsi-fied protest experience to the police violence Martin Luther King Jr.'s faced.

On Wednesday afternoon Pepsi reportedly released a statement announcing that the commercial would be removed, along with an official apology. It was an about-face from their statement on Tuesday, when the company stood by its ad.

Mashable has reached out to Pepsi for additional comment.

Topics X/Twitter

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Nicole Gallucci

Nicole is a Senior Editor at Mashable. She primarily covers entertainment and digital culture trends, and in her free time she can be found watching TV, sending voice notes, or going viral on Twitter for admiring knitwear. You can follow her on Twitter @nicolemichele5.

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