Mexico City, Mexico-. Oprah Winfrey She was born in Kosciusko, a small rural town in the state of Mississippi and did not have an easy childhood: her father abandoned her and her maternal family was so poor that her grandmother made dresses for her out of potato sacks. Since she was little, she knew what bullying was. She was the center of ridicule from her classmates for the origin of the clothes she wore.
However, this was not the worst that the girl would have to experience. Together with her mother, she moved to a poor neighborhood in the city of Milkwaukee, in Wisconsin. At just nine years old, the girl would suffer repeated abuse by one of her cousins. Then three men known to her family also raped her. At the age of 14, the teenager became pregnant as a result of one of those abusive relationships. The baby was born prematurely and died a few minutes after delivery.
With all the pain she was carrying, the young woman got up and decided that she would change her life. For this she moved with her father who had a stable job as a barber. Although she had not been present in her previous life, he decided to take her in. She has said that he was a very strict man and taught her the value of discipline and effort.
Under his mentorship, Oprah was encouraged to reach her potential. The girl left behind a troubled and rebellious past with occasional petty theft to become one of the best students in her class.
In 1971, thanks to winning a speech contest, he won a scholarship to enter Tennessee State University, where he studied communication. That would be the beginning of her career in the world of television, but the beginnings would not be easy for Winfrey either. Not everyone was betting on the young African-American because she got too involved in the stories and for some producers she was very emotional. Without abandoning her style, the journalist continued to insist and she was the first African-American woman in history to appear on a Nashville newscast.
Oprah’s charisma and her closeness to the public was such that she continued to reap success in different newscasts and television programs, until in 1985 she took the risk of presenting a program of her own production. Thus was born “The Oprah Winfrey Show”. A program that managed to gather in front of the television an average audience of 10 million viewers in each broadcast. All the people who had something interesting to tell passed through that space. Among them the first black president of the United States, Barack Obama. In fact, Oprah was very supportive of him during his campaign and became as involved as he had ever been in American politics.
As a result of these years being the star woman on television, the journalist not only became one of the most influential people in the United States, but also a very rich woman. Her fortune is estimated at $2.6 billion. Of which she allocated large sums to philanthropy, especially to support young blacks from poor families, as she was. She was also given an honorary Oscar award and she has been recognized by several universities.
Among all the life stories of improvement, Oprah Gail Winfrey’s is undoubtedly one of the most inspiring. The successful presenter today is one of the most respected influential women in the United States, but her path was full of obstacles.
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