CNN said that Angela Bassett gave an encouraging speech after getting the Glamour Woman Of The Year Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Black Panther actress went on to thank many women, both on and off screen, who have helped her career and her life.
“We are undervalued like Rosa Parks, who was thought to be quiet and weak and without a voice,” she said.
“But on a December evening in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks said, ‘When that white driver stepped back toward us… I felt a sense of determination wrap around me like a blanket on a cold night.’ The day she wouldn’t give up her seat on the bus, the fight for civil rights for Black people in this country got a big boost. We are brave like Bessie Coleman, a barber in Chicago who wanted to learn to fly but was turned down by flight schools in our country,” she said. “She kept trying. She instead learned French, went to flight school in France, and became the first Black and Native American woman pilot in 1921. Brave Bessie, as she came to be known, ran a successful aerial show business in her own plane around this country, which tried to stop her from following her dream.
The actress went on, giving flowers to Tina Turner, whom Bassett had played in the classic movie What’s Love Got to Do with It, and mentioning her mother.
Bassett said, “We are strong like Tina Turner, who gave up everything she had worked for except her name so she could be free from abuse.”
“She started over and rethought her career as a rock ‘n’ roll singer, a genre in which no Black woman had ever done well. Tina Turner went on to become one of the most famous and successful artists in the world. She earned her place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. My mother, Betty Jane, was a single mother who raised her three daughters to be strong, proud women who could take care of themselves. She taught them to be resourceful, just like us. She often had trouble making ends meet, but she always made sure we had what we needed.
The most powerful part of her speech was the end, when she asked the audience to think about what their “contributions to move humanity forward” would be.
“What keeps me going when the odds seem to be against me are the legacies of these women and so many others,” she said.
“Against us. And as I stand here tonight, I want to challenge all of us to think about how we can help move humanity forward. What will you do to make sure that girls and women in the future live in a world where everyone is treated fairly? And when people tell you that you can’t, won’t, or can’t do something, or when you start to feel doubt or fear, let your determination cover you like a quilt on a cold night. And keep going. The world needs you, and it might need you more than ever. We have always been needed by the world.”
