Oprah Winfrey's Golden Globes Speech

Oprah Winfrey received the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2018 Golden Globes and delivered a speech so powerful that it briefly launched a presidential campaign. She began with her own story — a little girl watching Sidney Poitier win the Academy Award in 1964 and seeing, for the first time, what was possible for a Black woman in America. Then she broadened her lens to the women who had spoken out in the #MeToo movement, the women who had been silenced for decades, and the girls watching at home who needed to know that 'a new day is on the horizon.'

The speech's power derives from Oprah's unique authority. She is the most successful self-made woman in American media history, a person who rose from rural poverty in Mississippi to become one of the most influential figures on Earth. When she speaks about perseverance, about speaking truth to power, about the courage required to break silence, she is drawing on a reservoir of lived experience that no one in that room could match.

The audience gave her a standing ovation that lasted several minutes. Pundits immediately speculated about a presidential run. But the speech's lasting significance is not political — it is the way Oprah connected personal struggle to collective action, making each viewer feel that their own battles were part of a larger story. '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.'