Herald viral video to appear on Oprah special Wednesday 9 p.m.

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This viral video, taken at a June 3 rally by Heralds Executive Editor Scott Brinton, will be shown as part of an Oprah Winfrey special tonight at 9 p.m.
Scott Brinton/Herald

A Herald viral video of 7-year-old Wynta-Amor Rogers, of Uniondale, will be shown Wednesday night as part of an Oprah Winfrey special, "Where Do We Go from Here?"

In the 15-second clip, the very animated Wynta-Amor chants, "No justice, no peace!" with the crowd around her during a protest in Merrick on June 3.

The show, a two-part special, is a conversation between Winfrey and prominent black thought leaders, activists and artists from across the nation. The first part aired Tuesday night. Part Two will be shown at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network), as well as on Discovery Network channels and OWN's YouTube, Facebook and Instagram pages.

The show comes in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the two weeks of nationwide protests that have followed. 

"I've been having private conversations with friends and thought leaders about what's next and where do we go from here," Winfrey said. "I thought it would be both of interest and service to bring their ideas, concerns and comments into a national spotlight."

Winfrey explores three central questions:

What matters now?
What matters next?
Where do we go from here?

Scott Brinton, the Heralds executive editor, took the video of Wynta-Amor and immediately posted it to Twitter last Wednesday. By midnight, more than a million people had viewed it. Within a week, it had some 23.1 million views, 215,000 likes, 54,000 retweets and nearly 2,000 comments.

"People have asked why I think the video electrified the Twittersphere as it did," Brinton said. "For one, Wynta-Amor was such a dynamic figure — strong, fierce, brave. If a 7-year-old can bound into the street with such fervor, then any adult should be unafraid of protesting."

Bernice King — CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. — retweeted the post and pinned it to her Twitter page. 

"Well, well, little sister," Bernice King remarked.

A number of celebrities, including actor Billy Baldwin and actress Halle Berry, retweeted it as well.

"Lil' mama has had enough!" Berry wrote in all caps.

ABC and CBS have both shown the video on national news shows, as well as a host of local TV outlets, and newspapers and magazines around the world have written about it.

Among the speakers on Winfrey's special will be:

Politician Stacey Abrams
New York Times writer Charles Blow
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay
Professor and author Jennifer Eberhardt
1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones
Historian Ibram Kendi (author of "How to be an Anti-Racist")
Actor David Oyelowo ("Selma")
Color of Change founder Rashad Robinson
NAACP board member the Rev. Dr. William Barber II.

Wynta-Amor and her mom, Lakyia Jackson, came to the Merrick protest the day after a group of about 30 people had tried to stop roughly 150 Black Lives Matter protesters from marching on the sidewalk along Merrick Road in the community.

On the day Wynta attended with her mother, about 2,000 BLM protesters turned out. The day after that, there were 4,000.

For Brinton's Day One story, click here. 

For Day Two story, click here.  

For Day Three story, click here.