Oprah Winfrey said Americans by and large know “diddly-squat” about the history of the civil rights movement. The talk show queen and media mogul made her comments during the promotion of her new film, “The Butler,” about a black man who serves in that capacity through seven administrations at the White House.
“They don’t know diddly-squat,” she said in a recent interview with Parade magazine. “Diddly-squat.”
Ms. Winfrey also said that when she hears the N-word, she thinks of the “millions of people who heard that as their last word as they were hanging from a tree.”
Her count may be off a bit, however; as Breitbart reported, Tuskegee Institute historians say that about 3,446 blacks were lynched in America between the years of 1882 and 1968.
Ms. Winfrey capped the interview with a commentary about the acquittal of Florida resident George Zimmerman on murder charges for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The “shooting of Trayvon Martin” was notable because it exposed just what value Americans put on black lives, she said, Breitbart reported.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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