Viola Davis always meets the moment.
The EGOT winner accepted the Chairman’s Award during the 57th NAACP Image Awards on Saturday, and during her speech, she reflected on her early beginnings, rising from poverty in South Carolina to the state of the country.
“I always feel like I’m going to step into feeling like I deserve it.”
“I like this quote, that the definition of hell is on your last day on Earth, the person you became meets the person that you could have become,” she continued. “I say that about our nation, I say that about myself; that there is no becoming until you face the depth and the darkness of your own soul. There is no becoming without healing, and without a radical acceptance of one’s truth. I know that about myself growing up in poverty.”
She continued, “Little chocolate girl with thick lips and wide nose in Rhode Island in 1965. I didn’t see hope. I didn’t see dreams. I just wanted to be somebody. I wanted success because I thought it was significance. And no one can describe the journey of going from the little chocolate girl searching for hope, searching for God, and the girl living a transcendent life.”
“That is a hero’s journey, and we have only to follow the thread of a hero’s path. And where we had thought we would find an abomination, we shall find a God. And where we thought that we could slay the other, we will slay ourselves. And where we had thought to journey outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence,” Davis added. “And where we had thought to be alone, we shall come to be with all the world. There is no soul of a nation without the soul of its people. And the soul of its people is not just who is represented in the breathing and alive people in this room, but by all those who are no longer here. We either move forward together or not at all. There is no man behind the curtain who has a control over your life.”
“Our crown has already been bought and paid for,” she told the audience. “All we have to do is wear it.”
Watch the full acceptance award below.
