For the first six years of her life, the young Winfrey was raised on a Mississippi farm by her grandmother. That being perhaps the first stroke of good luck for the young child. Oprah has stated that living with her grandmother probably saved her life. While in her grandmother's care, she was taught to read at a very early age, instilling a love of reading in her that she retains today. She began her public speaking career at the tender age of three when she began reading aloud and reciting sermons to the congregation of her church.
Oprah has said that she heard her grandmother state on several occasions that Oprah was "gifted." While the young child didn't know exactly what being "gifted" meant, she thought that it meant that she was special. And that was enough to keep her going. That bit of praise, the thought that she was "gifted" and "special" may have been what got her through the hard years that she was to spend with her mother.
At the age of six, her mother, Vernita Lee, decided that she could care for her young daughter and Oprah was sent to live with her mother in Milwaukee. From ages six to thirteen, Oprah stayed with her mother. She was raped by a cousin when she was nine years old and later molested by a male friend of her mother's and by an uncle. The young girl never told anyone about the abuse that she was suffering. Instead, she held her anger and pain inside and she rebelled. She repeatedly ran away and got into trouble.
Her mother decided to put her into a detention home. Fortunately for Oprah, she was denied admission to the home because there were no openings. So, in what may have been her second major stroke of good luck, she was sent to live with her father Vernon Winfrey in Nashville. Before she ceased her promiscuous and wild behavior, she became pregnant and gave birth to a stillborn baby boy when she was fourteen. The death of her baby devastated her and she vowed to turn her life around.Her father helped her with her mission by strapping her with his strict rules and discipline. Vernon made sure that his daughter stuck to her curfew, maintained high grades in school and encouraged Oprah to be her best. Oprah's father helped her turn her life around. Oprah has spoken of his requirement that she read a book each week and completes a book report on the book.
At the age of nineteen, Oprah landed her first job as a reporter for a radio station in Nashville. Shortly afterwards, she entered Tennessee State University to pursue a career in radio and television broadcasting. During her freshman year at TSU, Oprah won several pageants, including "Miss Black Nashville" and "Miss Tennessee."
In 1976, Oprah Winfrey moved to Baltimore, where she hosted a TV show called People Are Talking. The show was a hit and Winfrey stayed for eight years. She was then recruited by a TV station in Chicago to host her own morning show, A.M. Chicago. The show was competing against the immensely popular Phil Donahue Show. After several months, Oprah's warm-hearted style had taken her to first place in the ratings. Her success led to a role in Steven Spielberg's film, The Color Purple in 1985, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.
In 1986, Oprah started the Oprah Winfrey Show. The rest is, as they say, history. Oprah has come from being a poor, black, farm girl from Mississippi to a national celebrity. To her resume she can add reporter, actress, writer, producer, activist and TV talk show host... but it doesn't stop there. Oprah, it seems, is unstoppable.
Rankings
Winfrey was called "arguably the world's most powerful woman" by CNN and Time.com, "arguably the most influential woman in the world" by the American Spectator, "one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century" and "one of the most influential people" from 2004 to 2010 by Time. Winfrey is the only person in the world to have appeared in the latter list on all eight occasions.
At the end of the 20th century Life listed Winfrey as both the most influential woman and the most influential black person of her generation, and in a cover story profile the magazine called her "America's most powerful woman". In 2007 USA Today ranked Winfrey as the most influential woman and most influential black person of the previous quarter century. Ladies Home Journal also ranked Winfrey number one in their list of the most powerful women in America and Senator Barack Obama has said she "may be the most influential woman in the country". In 1998 Winfrey became the first woman and first African-American to top Entertainment Weekly's list of the 101 most powerful people in the entertainment industry. Forbes named her the world's most powerful celebrity in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2010. In 2010 Life magazine named Winfrey one of the 100 people who changed the world, alongside such luminaries as Jesus Christ, Elvis Presleyand Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Winfrey was the only living woman to make the list.
Columnist Maureen Dowd seems to agree with such assessments: "She is the top alpha female in this country. She has more credibility than the president. Other successful women, such as Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart, had to be publicly slapped down before they could move forward. Even Condi has had to play the protegé with Bush. None of this happened to Oprah — she is a straight ahead success story. Vanity Fair wrote: "Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope Bill O'Reilly said: "this is a woman that came from nothing to rise up to be the most powerful woman, I think, in the world. I think Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in the world, not just in America. That's — anybody who goes on her program immediately benefits through the roof. I mean, she has a loyal following; she has credibility; she has talent; and she's done it on her own to become fabulously wealthy and fabulously powerful.
Biographer Kitty Kelley states that she has always been fascinated by Winfrey: "As a woman, she has wielded an unprecedented amount of influence over the American culture and psyche...There has been no other person in the 20th Century whose convictions and values have impacted the American public in such a significant way.... I see her as probably the most powerful woman in our society. I think Oprah has influenced every medium that she's touched.”
In 2005 Winfrey was named the greatest woman in American history as part of a public poll as part of The Greatest American. She was ranked #9 overall on the list of greatest Americans, however polls estimating Winfrey's personal popularity have been inconsistent. A November 2003 Gallup poll estimated that 73% of American adults had a favorable view of Winfrey. Another Gallup poll in January 2007 estimated the figure at 74%, although it dropped to 66% when Gallup conducted the same poll in October 2007. A December 2007 Fox News poll put the figure at 55%. According to Gallup's annual most admired poll, Americans consistently rank Winfrey as one of the most admired women in the world. Her highest rating came in 2007 when she was statistically tied with Hillary Clinton for first place. In a list compiled by the British magazine New Statesman in September 2010, She was voted 38th in the list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010"
Personal wealth
Born in rural poverty, and then raised by a mother on welfare in a poor urban neighborhood, Winfrey became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show went national. Winfrey was in a position to negotiate ownership of the show and start her own production company because of the success and the amount of revenue the show generated. At age 41, Winfrey had a net worth of $340 million and replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. Although black people are just under 13% of the U.S. population, Winfrey has remained the only African American to rank among America's 400 richest people nearly every year since 1995. With a 2000 net worth of $800 million, Winfrey is believed to be the richest African American of the 20th century. Due to her status as a historical figure, Professor Juliet E.K. Walker of the University of Illinois created the course "History 298: Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon." Winfrey was the highest paid TV entertainer in the United States in 2006, earning an estimated $260 million during the year, five times the sum earned by second-place music executive Simon Cowell. By 2008, her yearly income had increased to $275 million.
Forbes' international rich list has listed Winfrey as the world's only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006 and as the first black woman billionaire in world history. According to Forbes, in September 2010 Winfrey was worth over $2.7 billion and has overtaken former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as the richest self-made woman in America.
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