Oprah Winfrey

Her birth certificate says Orpah, after the woman in the Book of Ruth. People said it wrong often enough that Oprah stuck. Her parents never married. Her mother Vernita Lee, a housemaid, went north, and Winfrey spent her first six years with her grandmother Hattie Mae Lee in rural Mississippi, poor enough that she wore dresses cut from potato sacks. She has said she was molested by a cousin, an uncle and a family friend beginning when she was nine, and that she ran away at 13. At 14 she gave birth to a son, born prematurely, who died. She was then sent to Nashville to live with Vernon Winfrey, a barber. While she was still in high school the city's Black radio station hired her to read the news.

She was the youngest anchor and the first Black woman anchor at the Nashville station now called WTVF. Baltimore's WJZ made her a co-anchor in 1976, removed her from the desk a year later, and put her on a local talk show called People Are Talking. In 1984 WLS in Chicago handed her a half-hour morning program running last in its slot, and within months it had passed Donahue in the city. Roger Ebert talked her into a syndication deal. The Oprah Winfrey Show went national on September 8, 1986 and ran until May 25, 2011. She built Harpo Productions around it and kept ownership, which was the part that mattered — Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray and The Dr. Oz Show all came out of her company. In 2011 she launched a cable network under her own initials.

What she could sell she could sell to anyone, which is also the charge against her. She started a book club in 1996 and a selection became a bestseller on announcement, worth perhaps a million extra copies. The same reach put her in a courtroom. After an April 1996 episode on mad cow disease in which she said she was through with hamburgers, Texas cattlemen sued her and her guest under a food-disparagement statute for 11 million dollars. She moved the show to Amarillo for the two-month trial and a jury cleared her on February 26, 1998. Her company also made national figures of Phil McGraw and Mehmet Oz, and the health advice that followed is the most durable criticism of her career. Two economists estimated her 2008 endorsement of Barack Obama was worth more than a million primary votes.

Forbes counts her the richest Black woman in the world and the wealthiest female celebrity, and the money goes into places that argue with each other. In 2007 she opened a Leadership Academy for Girls south of Johannesburg, spending 40 million dollars on 22 acres with laboratories, a theatre and a beauty salon, and answered the charge of extravagance by saying that beauty around a child brings the beauty out of her. Oprah's Angel Network raised more than 80 million dollars before she wound it up in 2010, paying its administrative costs herself so that none came out of the giving. She is 72 and still working. The verdict on what the whole of it amounts to is not in.

Oprah Winfrey's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• The Color Purple film
  Her first film role, and an Academy Award nomination for supporting actress 1985
• Harpo Productions company
  Oprah backwards. Owning the show was the decision the rest rests on 1986
• The Oprah Winfrey Show television
  Twenty-five years of national syndication, ending May 25, 2011 1986
• Oprah's Book Club television
  A segment that could add a million copies to a novel overnight 1996
• Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls building
  Forty million dollars on 22 acres at Henley on Klip, south of Johannesburg 2007
• Oprah Winfrey Network company
  Launched on January 1, the day before the talk show's final season began 2011

• 1971 aged ~17 Wins the Miss Black Tennessee pageant at 17 She was already reading the news part-time at WVOL.
• 1976 aged ~22 Moves to WJZ in Baltimore to co-anchor the six o'clock news She was taken off the desk the following year.
• August 14, 1978 aged 24 People Are Talking premieres in Baltimore The format that turned out to be hers.
• January 2, 1984 aged 29 Takes over AM Chicago, last in its time slot Within months it had overtaken Donahue in the city.
• September 8, 1986 aged 32 The Oprah Winfrey Show goes into national syndication
• February 26, 1998 aged 44 An Amarillo jury clears her in the Texas cattlemen's suit She had moved the show to Texas for the two months of the trial.
• January 2007 aged 52 Opens the Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa One hundred and fifty pupils at first, rising to 450.
• May 25, 2011 aged 57 The last episode of the talk show airs after 25 years Her own network had launched on January 1 of the same year.
• November 20, 2013 aged 59 Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

• Steven Spielberg b. 1946
  Director and producer whose blockbusters and dramas have defined American cinema for five decades. directed her first film
• Toni Morrison 1931–2019
  Nobel laureate whose novels, including Beloved, explored the African American experience with profound lyricism. adapted and starred in her novel
• Maya Angelou 1928–2014
  Poet and memoirist whose I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings broke new ground in autobiographical writing. mentor
• Barack Obama b. 1961
  44th President and first African American to hold the office, known for the Affordable Care Act. endorsed
• Madam C. J. Walker 1867–1919
  Entrepreneur who built a major Black hair-care company and used her wealth for philanthropy and civil-rights causes. predecessor as self-made Black businesswoman
• Walter Cronkite 1916–2009
  CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism. the network-anchor authority she inherited and left behind