Former All My Children star Debbi Morgan shared an emotional message with fans on Instagram Friday, breaking down into tears when discussing the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the black community. She also lashed out at those she saw ignoring social distancing guidelines when she went out before filming the video. Recent studies have found the coronavirus has hit the black community hard across the country.
“This is my first day out in about 12 days. I’m on my way to Whole Foods to get some important essentials that we need!” Morgan said in the clip, fighting through tears, notes the Daily Mail. “And I don’t know, for some reason today I’ve just been overcome with such emotion. I just want all of us to get through this and to the other side. And especially within our black communities, where people are sick and dying.”
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“So many of us are dying, and we can’t put food on the table for our children. We can’t pay our rent, we can’t pay our mortgages,” Morgan continued from her car. “Our ancestors were a strong people and they got through slavery. We are still a strong people and we will get through this COVID-19, but we have got to be smart, and stay safe, because we cannot, and will not, be broken.”
Several cities and states throughout the country have included breakdowns by race in daily coronavirus reports and they show how COVID-19 has left the black community devastated. For example, 33 percent of all those hospitalized are black, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reorts the BBC. In Chicago, 68 percent of the patients who died from the virus are black. According to data compiled by the APM Research Lab, the COVID-19 mortality rate among blacks is 34.7 per 100,000 residents, 2.6 times higher than whites thorough April 30. As of Sunday afternoon, there have been 67,155 reported deaths from the coronavirus overall in the U.S., reports Johns Hopkins University.
Morgan, 63, is best known for playing Angie Baxter-Hubbard on ABC’s All My Children, and became the first black actor to win a Daytime Emmy when she won Outstanding Supporting Atcress in a Drama Series in 1989. Her other credits include Power, The Bold and the Beautiful and The Young and the Restless. She starred in the movies Love & Basketball, Coach Carter, Eve’s Bayou and The Hurricane.
Morgan has been staying home during the coronavirus pandemic, and shared a video of herself playing the piano on Thursday. “Getting some joy learning how 2 play piano during these sad times…be well my family,” she wrote on Instagram.
