A mild drama occurred when Late Chadwick Boseman’s widow, Taylor Simone Ledward Boseman, was called to receive the Hollywood star’s 2021 NAACP Image Award on Saturday.
She accepted the award amid tears while organisers made spirited efforts to console her.
In an emotion-laden voice, she said: “As always, he would give all honour and glory to the most high God,
“He would thank his mom and dad, and he would give honor to the ancestors as we now honor him. Thank you NAACP Image Awards for always giving him his flowers.
“He was an uncommon artiste and an even more uncommon person. But the manner in which we lost him is not uncommon at all. Not in our community.”
Boseman won the Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture award for his work in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, one of his last films.
The widow also urged the Black community to have colon cancer screenings and spoke more about the disease.
“Black people in this country are 20 percent more likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer and 40 percent more likely to die from it. The age for routine screening has recently been lowered to 45 so if you are 45 years of age or older, please get screened. Don’t put it off any longer, please get screened.
“This disease is beatable if you catch it in its early stages so you don’t have any time to waste even if you have no family history and even if you think nothing is wrong.
“And if you are younger than 45, please be proactive about your health. Know the signs, know the science and listen to your body. Please, you are so needed and you are so loved. Please take your health into your own hands. Thank you,” she explained.
Chadwick Boseman passed away in August last year at the age of 43 after a difficult four-year battle with colon cancer.
The NAACP Image Award was conceived to recognize outstanding performances of coloured people in the America.
Historically, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells.
