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AT A GLANCE
Winfrey, Oprah Gail
4 articles on Winfrey, Oprah Gail
Winfrey, Oprah
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
Word Count: 1580 Includes: Bibliography(b. 29 January 1954), businesswoman, actress, and talk-show host. In 1994, for her fortieth birthday, Oprah Winfrey ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., and finished in four hours, twenty-nine minutes, and fifteen seconds. Her ability constantly to challenge herself, as exemplified by the Marine Corps Marathon, has resulted in Winfrey's becoming an international icon for motivation, a universal symbol of business savvy and philanthropy, and an unsurpassed representation of popular American culture.Oprah Gail Winfrey was born to unwed parents in Kosciusko, Mississippi. Her mother, Vernita Lee, was an eighteen-year-old domestic worker, and her father, Vernon Winfrey, was a twenty-year-old doing duty in the armed forces. Oprah initially was reared ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 8221954–
African American talk show host, Academy Award– nominated actor and producer, whose syndicated television show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, is possibly the most popular talk show ever. Oprah Winfrey was born on a farm in Kosciusko, Mississippi. Her paternal grandmother raised her until she was six years old, when she moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to live with her mother, Vernita Lee. Though Winfrey did well in school, she was allegedly sexually abused by male relatives and became increasingly troubled as a teenager. Her mother, a maid who was busy raising two other children, eventually sent Winfrey to live with her disciplinarian father, a barber and businessman in Nashville, Tennessee. Winfrey flowered under Vernon Winfrey's strict supervision, excelling ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 3268 Includes: Further Reading(29 Jan. 1954– ), talk show host, actor, and entrepreneur, was born Oprah Gail Winfrey in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to eighteen-year- old Vernita Lee, and Vernon Winfrey, a twenty-year-old soldier. Vernita intended to call the baby “Orpah,” after the biblical figure, but accepted “Oprah” when the name was misspelled by a clerk. Shortly after her daughter's birth, Vernita left Mississippi for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, leaving her newborn under the watchful eye of Oprah's paternal grandparents, Hattie Mae Bullock and Earless Lee, who were pig farmers. In 1960 Oprah went to Milwaukee to join her mother, who was working as a maid and who had given birth to a second daughter, Patricia. Another child, Jeffrey, followed a few years later, and Vernita struggled to ...
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Source: Black Women in America, Second Edition
Word Count: 2592 Includes: Early Career | A Social Phenomenon | Theories of Her Success | Bibliography(b. 29 January 1954),
talk-show host, actor, and producer. It should surprise no one with a sense of history that, as soon as race and gender obstacles began to fall in society, an African American woman rose to a position of dizzying success and influence. All the characteristics and values that helped black women survive against the worst forms of oppression helped one black woman, Oprah Winfrey, to soar.Oprah Winfrey was born to Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey in Kosciusko, Mississippi. When her parents, who were not married, separated, she went to live with her maternal grandmother on a farm. Although life was austere, the young girl thrived. She learned to read before she was three and was in the third grade by the age of six. At that point, she went to ...
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