In recent months, headlines have been plagued with a robust number of police brutality cases against Black people, specifically Black men. To help fight this epidemic, Oprah Winfrey became the latest celebrity to join list of Hollywood elite speaking out against the violence.
To hear what Winfrey had to say, TMZ caught up with the notable billionaire after her visit to the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington D.C.
“The most moving and profound [part of the museum] was the section on Emmett Till,” she said. “They have Emmett Till’s casket…and when you look at the story of Emmett Till and how that motivated a whole nation to take action, and then you think about what’s happening in our country today with Black men, unarmed, being shot, it’s like a new Emmett Till every week.”
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Moved by the magnitude of Till’s exhibit, who was lynched in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, Winfrey noted that seeing killing or lynching’s every day at that time was something new and abnormal, but now often seems like just another day in America.
“When that happened, it was like the country had never seen anything like that demonstrated, and now you see it [every week].”
Winfrey also recognizes that Till’s death sparked a movement for a “whole nation.”