Oprah Winfrey made history at the Golden Globes and delivered a rousing speech where she predicted a time when women won't have to say "Me too" ever again.
Oprah Winfrey
The entertainment mogul accepted the annual Cecil B. DeMille Award on Sunday night, becoming the first black woman — and the 15th woman total — to receive the honor since it was first handed out in 1952.
"In 1964, I was a little girl sitting on the linoleum floor of my mother's house in Milwaukee, watching Anne Bancroft present the Oscar for best actor at the 36th Academy Awards," she said at the Beverly Hills awards show after a standing ovation. "She opened the envelope and said five words that literally made history: 'The winner is Sidney Poitier.'" (Poitier became the first black man to be presented with the DeMille Award in 1982.)
"Up to the stage came the most elegant man I'd ever seen," Winfrey explained. "I'd never seen a black man being celebrated like that. I tried very many times to explain what a moment like that means to a little girl, a kid watching from the cheap seats, as my mom came through the door bone-tired from cleaning other peoples' houses." But all she could do was quote Poitier and say, "Amen, amen."
She added, "It is not lost on me that at this moment, there are some little girls watching as I become the first black woman to be given the same award. It is an honor and it is a privilege to share the evening with all of them."
Winfrey continued her speech by calling out a press that is "under siege" and a climate where women are being empowered to speak up and say "Me too" — and men are listening.
"I want to say that I value the press more than ever before as we try to navigate these complicated times, which brings me to this: What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have, and I'm especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories," she said.
Turning talk to the sexual harassment prevention initiative Time's Up and the many women who are backing the movement who were in the room, Winfrey explained that their fight transcends Hollywood.
"I want, tonight, to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue," she continued to a rapt audience. "They're the women whose names we'll never know."
Those names include Recy Taylor, who died 10 days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday and without justice. Taylor was walking home from church in Alabama in 1944 when she was abducted and raped by six white men. The attack, in the Jim Crow era, never went to trial and became a catalyst for the civil rights movement.
"For too long women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up," she said to loud cheers. Eleven years after being called upon to investigate Taylor's case in her role as secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter of the NAACP, Rosa Parks refused to obey a bus driver, and that choice "is now in every woman saying 'Me Too,' and every man who chooses to listen," said Winfrey.
She continued, earning her second of three ovations: "I want all the girls watching here and now to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say 'Me too' again."
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