Oprah made a powerful statement by honoring Breonna Taylor on cover

Breonna Taylor was only 26 years old when she was killed by police in March. The emergency medical technician probably never imagined that she would be on the cover of a magazine, let alone O Magazine, a publication that has only ever featured its founder Oprah Winfrey on the cover.

But that’s exactly what’s happened. The latest issue of O Magazine doesn’t feature Oprah (for the first time in the magazine’s history) but rather a hauntingly beautiful digital portrait of Taylor, whose life ended far too soon, and for whom justice has still not been served.

“We know how Breonna died,” Winfrey writes in an editorial accompanying cover featuring a portrait created by artist Alexis Franklin. “March 13. Louisville police storming into her apartment in the middle of the night. No uniforms. No ‘This is the police!’ Terrifying Breonna and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker.”

The police were executing an overnight warrant in the course of a narcotics investigation. They broke down the door, reportedly assuming Taylor was home alone, But she wasn’t. She was asleep in bed with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who was in legal possession of a firearm.

“Imagine if three unidentified men burst into your home while you were sleeping,” Winfrey writes.”And your partner fired a gun to protect you. And then mayhem.”

When the door broke down Walker fired a shot and police fired back, killing Breonna.

In the months since, only one of the three officers involved in her shooting has been fired, but not one has been charged or arrested for her death.

“We can’t be silent,” Winfrey writes. “We have to use whatever megaphone we have to cry for justice. And that is why Breonna Taylor is on the cover of O magazine. The September issue honors her life and the life of every other Black woman whose life has been taken too soon.”