Pam Grier tearfully recalls seeing lynching victim 'hanging from a tree' as a child: 'Triggers me today'
- - Pam Grier tearfully recalls seeing lynching victim 'hanging from a tree' as a child: 'Triggers me today'
Joey NolfiJanuary 20, 2026 at 1:25 AM
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ABC (2)
Pam Grier on 'The View'
Legendary actress and pop culture icon Pam Grier has opened up about an emotional childhood memory that still haunts her to to this day.
During Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. Day episode of The View, the talk show welcomed the influential Foxy Brown star to the Hot Topics table to reflect on her life and career as an boundary-pushing actress in the film industry — and she fittingly received a sustained standing ovation from the studio audience as she made her way to set.
As a notable figure in the blaxploitation film movement, the 76-year-old fielded questions about her personal experience with racial injustice, as panelist Sunny Hostin pointed out barriers she was able to break after growing up amid experiencing extreme racism in Columbus, Ohio.
Pam Grier and Sunny Hostin on 'The View'
"How did that shape you?" Hostin asked, with Grier offering an emotional response as she looked back on her life as the daughter of a member of the military.
"The military wouldn't allow Black families to live on the base, so you had to live in an apartment," Grier said. "You couldn't take a bus, couldn't afford a car, your dads walked to the base. Sometimes, we'd go from tree shade to shade to get back to the apartment — my brother and I and my mom — with bags."
Grier then teared up and looked off to the side of the table, telling the cohosts, "My mom would go, 'Don't look, don't look, don't look,' and she'd pull us away. Because there was someone hanging from a tree."
The studio audience gasped as Grier continued with her recollection.
"They have a memorial for it now, where you can see where people were and left," she said. "It triggers me today, to see that a voice can be silenced. And if a white family supported a Black [family], they're going to get burned down, killed, or lynched as well."
Grier also became emotional seeing The View audience support her with a standing ovation as she walked out to the table, with moderator Whoopi Goldberg pointing out the sustained affection Grier has courted throughout her career on screen.
Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Pam Grier, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin on 'The View'
"Did you ever think that after all this time, you would still elicit this kind of response from people who grew up watching you do what they wanted to do, that they felt compelled to do, but they were not in position to do on the screen?" Goldberg asked her friend. Grier looked at the Oscar-winning Ghost actress with tears in her eyes as she replied, "I got a lot of it from you."
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Goldberg additionally brought up a full-circle career initiative for Grier, who launched her Soul Flix platform, which sees the actress highlighting impactful Black cinema and television projects that have shaped the industry over the last several decades.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
