Chadwick Boseman Used Nina Simone's "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black" To Make the Most Moving SAG Awards Speech

Since its February 2018 premiere, Marvel’s Black Panther has become an unparalleled cultural phenomenon, shattering box office records and becoming the top-grossing superhero movie. And on Sunday night, January 27, the film, directed by Ryan Coogler, deservingly received the highest honors at the 2019 Screen Actors Guild Awards by winning Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

After the winning ensemble was announced and the cast headed to the stage, Chadwick Boseman (aka King T'Challa himself) gave a speech highlighting the film’s powerful legacy: He acknowledged the film’s importance, and did so in the best way possible — by citing Nina Simone’s now-anthemic song “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black.”

“This cast. This ensemble. When I think of going to work every day and the passion and the intelligence, the resolve, the discipline that everybody showed, I also think of two questions that we all have received during the course of multiple publicity runs,” Chadwick recalled, pondering the film’s success. “One is, ‘Did we know that this movie was going to receive this kind of response?’ Meaning, was it going to make a billion dollars? Was it going to still be around during awards season? And the second [...] is, ‘Has it changed the industry?’ Has it actually changed the way this industry works, how it sees us?”

Chadwick answered his own question by examining Nina Simone's lyrics and alluding to the racism and lack of opportunity still present in the entertainment industry. “To be young, gifted and black, we all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured, yet you are young, gifted and black," he said. "We know what it’s like to be told there’s not a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for you to be featured on. We know what it’s like to be the tail and not the head. We know what it’s like to be beneath and not above."

Those feelings and experiences fueled Chadwick and the rest of the cast as they worked on Black Panther. "And that is what we went to work with every day, because we knew — not that we would be around during awards season or that it would make a billion dollars — but we knew we had something special that we wanted to give the world," he continued. "That we could be full human beings in the roles that we were playing, that we could create a world that exemplified a world that we wanted to see."

To cap off his speech, Chadwick teased the imminent sequel to the Marvel superhero saga, saying, “One thing that I do know is that you can’t have a Black Panther now without a ‘two’ on it."

The January 27 win also represented a huge honor for comic-book adaptations, with the film becoming, per Entertainment Weekly, the first superhero movie to win Best Ensemble at the SAG Awards. Heading toward the Oscars, its winning chances remain high.

Making Chadwick’s own wish come true, the film recently became the first superhero movie ever nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards and, given how things stand, we could certainly witness a groundbreaking moment in Oscars history.

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