A magnificent course that you owe to your talent of course, but also
Jean Shelton. Your training at the Conservatory Theater then at the Shelton
Actors Lab de San Franscisco owes him much, as well as the startup of
your career in Los Angeles.
We know you as a police officer, as a sergeant, as a captain… In
Mel Gibson in The Deadly Weapon, of course; as President of the
United States, also, in 2012 by Roland Emmerich. We also find you
with Peter Weir in Witness, with Lars von Trier as well, or with
Wes Anderson.
Danny Glover is of course also Whoopy Goldberg’s husband in La
purple color by Steven Spielberg; it is also the black policeman in full
apartheid in Bopha! , the first film directed by Morgan Freeman.
Behind these roles is your strong commitment to the
African-American community, which is also reflected in your work for the
with the foundation, alongside Ben Guillory, of the Robey Theatre
Company, in honor of actor and activist Paul Robeson; in your
choice of director and producer also, when you
Commit in 2005 to screen the case of Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo,
in which respect for civil rights and the environment
had been questioned. And since 2006, you want to make a film
biographical on Toussaint Louverture, with a prestigious cast
memorial service of the founder of the Haitian republic.
This commitment comes from afar. I grew up in San Francisco, but I
faced racial injustice as a child, when I was going to visit my
grandparents in the rural state of Georgia, and when I went south
in the fifties and sixties: separate districts, schools
separate doors, separate bathrooms, separate areas
separated by bus."
This is a family commitment: your parents
belonged to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP).
Studying at the University of San Francisco, you become a member of the
Black Students Union, one of the three major associations having
worked on the longest student strike in American history
for the creation of a department of «Black Studies», but also of the
First School of Ethnic Studies in the United States.
Your commitment also extends to all forms of
discrimination, those related to drugs or AIDS. That’s how
you are a member of the Black AIDS Institute, Walden House
Oakland, or the Transafrica Forum. Your commitment alongside
trade unions, alongside humanitarian activists during the crisis
Darfur or following the Haiti earthquake in 2010 have
contributed to this long-term work called the awakening of
awareness. UNICEF has entrusted you with a mission
UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, to support the recognition of
populations of African descent in the Caribbean nations.
Coming to the Deauville Festival and Paris for this beautiful
Presentation of the African-Caribbean Arts Awards, which is the sixth edition,
you come to show us the example of those who know how to
useful notoriety. In France, it is often the figure of the intellectual,
academic or writer, expected in the field of engagement;
In the United States, major players have also fully seized this
public policy mission. Dear Danny Glover, you are among those who
give its nobility to what bears in the United States the beautiful name
of activism.
Dear Danny Glover, on behalf of the French Republic, we
Let’s present the knight’s insignia in the Order of Arts and Letters.