It’s not often you see a black women win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and that’s because it’s never happened before since the Emmy’s began in 1949.  So it fair to say that this years 67th Emmy Awards, was a milestone when Viola Davis – accepted the award for her leading role in ‘How to Get Away with Murder’.

This milestone was wonderfully and beautifully illustrated Davis’s acceptance speech, where she pays note to Harriet Tubman, was born into slavery in around 1822.  Tubman was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and, during the American Civil War, a Union spy.

In 1849, Tubman escaped Tubman escaped and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.  She later helped abolitionist John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women’s suffrage.

Read more about Harriet Tubman’s amazing story here HARRIET TUBMAN

Tell us what you think of the speech below.