Yahoo News Uzo Aduba Pays Tribute To Ruth Bader Ginsburg Following ‘Mrs. America’ Emmy Win: “Those Were Some Mighty Shoulders”
Following her supporting actress Emmy win for the FX limited series Mrs. America, Uzo Aduba took the opportunity to pay tribute to the late, great Ruth Bader Ginsburg, calling the Supreme Court justice’s recent passing “absolutely devastating.”
Speaking in the Emmys virtual press room Sunday night following her third Emmy win (her first two were for Netflix’s Orange is the New Black), Aduba said she wanted to thank Bader Ginsburg for all that she did.
“It’s important to put into context the time in which these women are existing,” she said. “We’re looking at revolutionary acts today in 2020 that surround women of color and we’re all mind-blown when we see these firsts and when you think of a woman who was born in the 1930s, who was part of the Harvard Law Review, went directly to Cornell, graduated first in her class from Columbia Law School, worked for the ACLU, made advances for women whether it was reproductive rights, or whether that’s with pay, and you know, the list goes on and on, and the second woman in the Supreme Court. These are remarkable historical events that change and shape the pathways for every single person who comes after them, so regardless of your political view on how she interprets the law, this is a woman who shaped culture and history for women, and she will be forever missed. Those were some mighty shoulders that she had and she carried a lot on and we thank her for carrying that weight for us.”
Having played Shirley Chisholm in Mrs. America, the first-ever African American congresswoman and the first African American to run for president from a national political party, Aduba drew parallels between the two legendary women.
“If I could say something to Shirley Chisholm,” she said, “it would be thank you for doing the hard thing. I would say thank you for making it okay to be oneself. You know she, in a time when for women, for Black women, or women of color who were supposed to occupy a very narrow amount of space, she was not afraid to dare, and live up to the fullness of her potential and whether we knew it or not, her doing that carved out room that we all have been desperate for. So I would thank her for doing the hard thing….she was willing to make that a part of her life’s work. I think that’s something all of her can be forever grateful for.”
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