Oprah Winfrey brought down the house at the 2018 Golden Globes on Sunday night, in a rousing nine-minute speech that paid tribute to civil rights figure Recy Taylor, declared that “time is up” for the men who have long silenced women and promised today’s girls that “a new day is on the horizon.”
Accepting this year’s Cecil B. DeMille Award, Winfrey opened her speech with an anecdote about watching Sidney Poitier win his Oscar in 1964 (“I’d never seen a black man being celebrated like that”), before recounting her early days on A.M. Chicago and how Quincy Jones championed her to be cast in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple.
Winfrey then segued into the topic of the night — the #TimesUp movement, in support of which all of those in attendance wore black. She cited the story of Recy Taylor, an African-American sharecropper who, at age 24 in 1944, was walking home from church in Abbeville, Ala. when she was abducted and raped by six white men. The NAACP sent Rosa Parks to investigate and (unsuccessfully) pursue charges against the assailants. Taylor died last month at 97.
“For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare to speak their truth to the power of [brutally powerful] men,” Winfrey said. “But their time is up.”
“A new day is on the horizon!” she later said. “And when that day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women… and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that… nobody ever has to say, ‘Me too’ again!”
Winfrey’s speech drew a standing ovation, bathed in many tears from those in the audience. As film director Ron Howard, who succeeded her on stage, said on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/RealRonHoward/status/950220192595898368
Watch Winfrey’s speech below:
http://pmctvline2.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/oprah-golden-globes.jpg
TVLine
