Kerry Washington, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Laverne Cox, and Angela Robinson, along with Lena Waithe, were all speaking on Monday at The NAACP Image Awards, an award show that honors the greatest achievements from people of color in entertainment from the past year. An acknowledgment of the importance of strong media representation, the Image Awards honors those fighting to end race discrimination in the industry, and these celebrated actresses and female creators used the platform to deliver a powerful message on the need for intersectional solidarity in the #MeToo movement.

The speech was a call-to-action to a number of people, from the straight white women who do not extend solidarity to women of color, queer women, trans women, and low-income women, to the the men who speak volumes with their silence during this cultural moment: the time for privileged apathy is up.

The actresses' speech raises an important issue that the movement still shrinks from confronting: How black women's experiences of sexual assault, and their work to end it, are too often the first accounts to be doubted, ignored, and excluded from the mainstream conversation.

Read the full article on solidarity during #MeToo by Jess Joho at Mashable