Photo on the left via: Getty Images/ Photo on the right by: Dan MacMedan/USA TODAY
We’re still applauding Oprah Winfrey and Sterling K. Brown on the history they made at the 75th annual Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night.
First, Sterling K. Brown, who plays Randall on NBC’s “This is Us,” became the first African American man to win a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a TV Drama Series. Then, the incomparable media mogul and philanthropist, Oprah Winfrey, officially became the first Black woman to receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.
Both accepted their respective awards with powerful messages pertaining to representation and speaking your truth. Brown ended his touching acceptance speech by saying this:
“Dan Fogelman (creator of ‘This Is Us,’) you wrote a role for a Black man that could only be played by a Black man. What I appreciate so much about this is that I’m being seen for who I am and being appreciated for who I am. And it makes it that much more difficult to dismiss me or dismiss anybody who looks like me.”
Watch Brown’s full acceptance speech below.
Then, the moment we’re sure everybody in the room and at home had been waiting for, finally happened- Winfrey accepted the Cecil B. DeMille award with a powerful speech that received a standing ovation. In it, she recalled as a little girl watching Sidney Poitier (the first Black actor to receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award) on television become the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Actor.
She then honored Recy Taylor, “a name I know and I think you should know, too,” said Winfrey. She continued to explain: “In 1944, Recy Taylor was a young wife and mother walking home from a church service she’d attended in Abbeville, Alabama, when she was abducted by six armed white men, raped, and left blindfolded by the side of the road coming home from church.”
As most of Hollywood came together to wear Black to the awards to support the Times Up, an anti-harrasemment action plan, Winfrey proclaimed in her speech:
“For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up… And I just hope — I just hope that Recy Taylor died knowing that her truth, like the truth of so many other women who were tormented in those years, and even now tormented, goes marching on.”
Watch Winfrey’s full acceptance speech below.
Congratulations, Oprah and Sterling! Thank you both for using the power of your platform.