While promoting her new movie, 'The Butler,' Oprah Winfrey compared the death of Trayvon Martin to the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, which helped ignite the civil rights movement. 'Trayvon Martin, parallel to Emmett Till,' Oprah told The Grio's Chris Witherspoon in a short clip of the interview that aired on MSNBC Monday. 'Let me just tell you, in my mind, same thing.

On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was savagely beaten and shot through the head in Money, Mississippi, all for the crime of speaking to a 21-year-old white woman. After a widely covered trial, his murderers were acquitted - leading to national indignation and helping to catalyze the civil rights movement.

Though the specifics of each case are vastly different, it's easy to compare Till's murder and its aftermath to the 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Oprah Winfrey did that very thing in a brief clip shown on Today, calling the killings "parallel" - and adding, "In my mind, [they're the] same thing."

At the same time, Winfrey - who stars in Lee Daniels' The Butler, a film set partially during the height of the civil rights movement - was careful to say that those outraged by Martin's death and George Zimmerman being found not guilty shouldn't dwell in the past. "You can get stuck in that," she said, "and not allow yourself to move forward and to see how far we've come."

In a previous interview with Diane Sawyer, she said her new movie, "The Butler," could offer an answer to white people who were confused as to why African Americans were so outraged about Martin's death.

Oprah also appeared on "CBS " for that show's entire second hour, talking about things as varied as morning sex, her upcoming interview with Lindsay Lohan, and her network, OWN.

"We're having fun, we're making money, we're really in the business," she said of OWN.

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