Niecy Nash-Betts Just Gave a Powerful Tribute to Black and Brown Women at the 2024 Emmys

The 2024 Emmy Awards were full of emotional speeches, from Quinta Brunson tearfully thanking her family and Abbott Elementary cast to Jeremy Allen White shouting out his young daughters, but one of the night’s most memorable moments came when Niecy Nash-Betts took the stage to accept the prize for best supporting actress in a limited or anthology series or movie for her role in Netflix’s Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

After being sweetly escorted to the stage by her wife Jessica Betts, Nash-Betts told the audience: “I accept this award in honor of every Black and Brown woman who has gone unheard yet overpoliced, like Glenda Cleveland, like Sandra Bland, like Breonna Taylor. As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power, and I’m going to do it until the day I die. Mama, I won!” 

The room promptly erupted into applause at the conclusion of Nash-Betts’s speech, which boldly drew attention to the all-too-real issues of systemic racism and misogynoir in everything from the criminal justice system to Hollywood.

This year’s Emmys mark Nash-Betts’s first win, although she’s been nominated a total of five times (most frequently for her role as nurse Didi Ortley on the HBO series Getting On). Hopefully, tonight represents the start of Nash-Betts—and every other Black women whose contributions to TV and film have so often been unacknowledged—getting their richly deserved flowers.