Oprah Winfrey's Golden Globes Cecil B. DeMille Award Acceptance Speech (2018) with full transcript

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases Oprah Winfrey's Golden Globes Cecil B. DeMille Award acceptance speech.

Excerpts from Wikipedia's article on Oprah Winfrey preface the video and transcript of this speech.

The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, and inspirational purposes.

All copyright remains with their owners.

Thanks to Oprah Winfrey for her artistic, entrepreneurial, and philanthropic work. Thanks to the publishers of this video and the publishers of this transcript.

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INFORMATION ABOUT OPRAH WINFREY
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey
"Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist.[1] She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011 in Chicago, Illinois.[6] Dubbed the "Queen of All Media",[7] she is the richest African-American[8] and North America's first multi-billionaire black person[9]and has been ranked the greatest black philanthropist in American history.[10][11] Several assessments rank her as the most influential woman in the world.[12][13] In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama[14] and honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard.[15][16]

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teens and became pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy.[17] Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place,[18] she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication,[19] she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized[19][20] the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue,[19] which a Yale study says broke 20th century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream.[21][22] By the mid-1990s, she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality.

[...]

Publishing and writing
Winfrey has co-authored five books....

Her memoir, The Life You Want, is scheduled for publication in 2017.[71]

Winfrey publishes magazines: O, The Oprah Magazine; from 2004 to 2008, she also published a magazine called O at Home.[72] In 2002, Fortune called O, the Oprah Magazine the most successful start-up ever in the industry."...

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SHOWCASE VIDEO: Oprah Winfrey Golden Globes Cecil B. DeMille Award Acceptance Speech



Pop & Sports HQ, Published on Jan 7, 2018

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FULL TRANSCRIPT OF OPRAH WINFREY'S GOLDEN GLOBES ACCEPTANCE SPEECH (2018)
From http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/08/entertainment/oprah-globes-speech-transcript/index.html

Read Oprah Winfrey's rousing Golden Globes speech
Updated 8:58 AM ET, Mon January 8, 2018

"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 opened the envelope and said five words that literally made history: "The winner is Sidney Poitier." Up to the stage came the most elegant man I had ever seen. I remember his tie was white, and of course his skin was black, and I had never seen a black man being celebrated like that. I tried many, 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 people's houses. But all I can do is quote and say that the explanation in Sidney's performance in "Lilies of the Field":

"Amen, amen, amen, amen."

In 1982, Sidney received the Cecil B. DeMille award right here at the Golden Globes and 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 this same award. It is an honor -- it is an honor and it is a privilege to share the evening with all of them and also with the incredible men and women who have inspired me, who challenged me, who sustained me and made my journey to this stage possible. Dennis Swanson who took a chance on me for "A.M. Chicago." Quincy Jones who saw me on that show and said to Steven Spielberg, "Yes, she is Sophia in 'The Color Purple.'" Gayle who has been the definition of what a friend is, and Stedman who has been my rock -- just a few to name.

I want to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association because we all know the press is under siege these days. We also know it's the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice. To -- to tyrants and victims, and secrets and lies. 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. Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell, and this year we became the story.

But it's not just a story affecting the entertainment industry. It's one that transcends any culture, geography, race, religion, politics, or workplace. So 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. They're the women whose names we'll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they're in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They're part of the world of tech and politics and business. They're our athletes in the Olympics and they're our soldiers in the military.

And there's someone else, Recy Taylor, a name I know and I think you should know, too. 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. They threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone, but her story was reported to the NAACP where a young worker by the name of Rosa Parks became the lead investigator on her case and together they sought justice. But justice wasn't an option in the era of Jim Crow. The men who tried to destroy her were never persecuted. Recy Taylor died ten days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. 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.

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. It was somewhere in Rosa Parks' heart almost 11 years later, when she made the decision to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, and it's here with every woman who chooses to say, "Me too." And every man -- every man who chooses to listen.

In my career, what I've always tried my best to do, whether on television or through film, is to say something about how men and women really behave. To say how we experience shame, how we love and how we rage, how we fail, how we retreat, persevere and how we overcome. I've interviewed and portrayed people who've withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights. So I want all the girls watching here, 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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