When Oprah Winfrey was publicly fired after only seven and a half months as the co-anchor of Baltimore’s WJZ’s 6PM weekday newscast, she was left devastated.
It was the first failure in her television career, and one of many harrowing and traumatic experiences that shaped her life, but ultimately stands as testament to the great woman’s ability to overcome, and emerge stronger than ever.
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From the outset, life wasn’t easy for Oprah Winfrey, the daughter of an unwed teenager who left Oprah in the care of her grandmother on a farm in Mississippi. They were so impoverished that Oprah’s clothes were often made from potato sacks, leading to her being tarnished with the nickname ‘Sack Girl’. Her favourite doll was made from a dried corn cob, and her only pets were cockroaches.
Oprah was initially named Orpah, after a Biblical character, but mispronunciation resulted in it being changed for good.
It wasn’t all bad, however. Her grandmother taught her to read before the age of three, and her ability to recite Bible verses from such a young age gained her respect from the local congregation. It was the first sign of the talent she would later gift upon the world.
At the age of six, Oprah moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where her mother was working as a maid.
Here, things only got worse.
In 1963, at nine years of age, Oprah was sexually abused by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend. The abuse lasted five years, until she ran away from home. A tumultuous year followed, in which she was almost sent to a juvenile detention centre, but was ultimately denied as all beds were occupied.
At 14, she gave birth to a stillborn child.
It was the last straw for Oprah’s mother, who sent her to live with her father, Vernon Winfrey. He was a strict disciplinarian, who made his daughter keep to a curfew and write a book report each week based on the novel he provided her with. “…he had some concerns about me making the best of my life, and would not accept anything less than what he thought was my best,” Oprah would later recall.
The structure was exactly what she needed. Oprah graduated an honour student, was voted Most Popular Girl in her class, and received prizes in oratory and dramatic recitation that saw her secure a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, where she studied communications while working at a local grocery store.
Oprah won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant at 17. Soon after, as a joke, she visited African American radio station WVOL, and read the news. As soon as the broadcast ended, she was offered an on-air role. The years spent at the station laid the foundation for her broadcasting career, and when she left school she immediately signed with a local television station as a reporter and anchor at WLAC-TV, where she became the first black woman to host the news in the station’s history.
By 22, Oprah had driven her red Oldsmobile Cutlass from Tennessee to Baltimore, where she joined WJZ-TV as co-anchor of the six o’clock news.
Producers noted that Oprah had a hard time separating herself from the stories she was reporting on. During interviews, she would often laugh or cry, and inject personal belief into the conversation. Here, she also fought racial prejudice from her co-host and staff, before being fired in less than eight months.
But the aspects that had made Oprah an imperfect fit for newscasting made her an idea fit for talk shows.
In 1978, she was hired as co-host for WJZ’s People Are Talking, a local breakfast show. “It was like breathing,” Oprah said of her first experience in the format.
After half a decade, she was recruited by Chicago’s WLS-TV to host their morning talk show, AM Chicago. Within months, the show went from last place in the ratings to the highest rated talk show in Chicago, overtaking Donahue, the show that had started it all.
Film critic Roger Ebert persuaded Oprah to sign a syndication deal two years later, resulting in the rebranded The Oprah Winfrey Show, an hour-long program broadcast nationally from September 8, 1986. Soon, she had doubled Donahue’s American audience to become host of the #1 daytime talk show in the country.
“Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey’s swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue…What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humour and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah’s eye…They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session,” wrote TIME Magazine in 1988.
This concept of a talk show as therapy would later be dubbed Oprahfication, and not even Oprah herself would be immune from it. On her show she would go on to address personal issues such as her history of sexual abuse, romantic troubles, and struggles with her weight. The latter would prove to be one of the most groundbreaking discussions, as Oprah’s success in a medium dominated by thin, white people paved the way for such women as Star Jones and Rosie O’Donnell.
The talk show industry boomed in the wake of Oprah’s success, spawning the likes of Ricki Lake, and The Jerry Springer Show. But while other hosts were distorting reality to create scandalous stories, Oprah was revealing reality for what it truly is.
Her work is credited with bringing LGBT issues to the awareness of national audiences, culminating in a scene on the sitcom Ellen, in which she plays a therapist who aids Ellen DeGeneres in embracing her own homosexuality.
This lead to rumours that Oprah was in a gay relationship with her close friend Gayle King. She addressed the topic in her magazine, O, in 2006. “”There isn’t a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it—how can you be this close without it being sexual? I’ve told nearly everything there is to tell. All my stuff is out there. People think I’d be so ashamed of being gay that I wouldn’t admit it? Oh, please.”
At its height in the early 90s, The Oprah Winfrey Show had 13.1 million viewers in the US each day. Though figured would fluctuate over the next two decades, Oprah would all-the-while retain the #1 position.
Her warm, trusting personality lead viewers to treat her views akin to fact, resulting in the so-called Oprah Effect. When she introduced Oprah’s Book Club in 1996, her selections immediately became best-sellers, with up to a million additional sales of the book being made immediately after the announcement. Her endorsement of Barack Obama is also believed to be responsible for up to 1.6 million votes for him in the 2007 Democratic primary.
Outside of her talk show, Oprah has proved herself to be quite the entrepreneur.
She has produced and acted in several films, including The Colour Purple, for which she received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards.
Oprah publishes O, The Oprah Magazine, which is consider the most successful start-up in the industry’s history. She is also the co-author of five books.
Oprah is also revered as a keen philanthropist.
In 1998, she founded Oprah’s Angel Network, a charity that raised more than $80 million through to 2010. Oprah personally paid for all administrative costs associated with the charity, meaning all the money collected has gone directly into charitable programs.
Between 2004 and 2010 she placed in the 50 Most Generous Americans list, becoming the first black person to ever appear on the list. By 2012, she had reportedly donated $400 million to educational causes internationally.
In 2013, she contributed $12 million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The Oprah Winfrey Show concluded in 2010, but not before Oprah was deemed “arguably the world’s most powerful woman” by CNN, and “one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century” by TIME. She appeared on the latter’s Most Influential People list every year between 2004 and 2011, becoming the first person to appear on the list 9+ times.
In 2011, Oprah launched OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, in cooperation with Discovery Communications. It is now available in 80 million homes across the United States.
From humble, often horrible origins, Oprah Winfrey has established herself as not just one of the most incredible women in history, not just one of the most incredible black people in history, but one of the most incredible people in history full-stop.
Through talent, empathy, and determination, Oprah has found the power and wealth she deserves, and paid it back in kind to a loyal audience, devoted staff, and the many people around the world who are growing up in situations just like hers.
It’s a truly incredible story.