"Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down."
- Oprah Winfrey
Black American women in the 60s constantly suffered endless amounts of discrimination, disrespect, and unappreciation. The chances of them completing their education was smaller than other Americans in the country. Success was nearly impossible for them. However, one inspiring woman did more than just succeed. Oprah Gail Winfrey, a media executive, was gifted as a child even though she dealt with devastating times growing up. She lived with her grandparents for the beginning of her childhood. Young Winfrey constantly hid in terror from her grandfather, but her grandmother taught her to have power. With her help, Winfrey was already a public speaker at a young age. When she went to live with her father, she was sexually assaulted multiple times by close relatives and trusted family friends (Sands). Ultimately, she had a child by her teenage cousin at 14. Unfortunately, the baby only lived to see a couple of hours. Stories like these shaped Winfrey and she took hard times and replaced them with success. While gaining wealth and fame, she shared it with other women who were struggling in life, by providing them with the support they needed. Her shows, movies (such as The Color Purple, which had an impact), and speeches brought great amounts of motivation, and inspired others. As a black woman with an enormous amount of power and strength, Oprah Winfrey’s heroic ways bring an inspiring light, through the story of overcoming her tragic childhood, and she donates her success and her insightful wisdom to other women with hard lives.
Oprah Winfrey with Ernest ChuErnest Chu [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]Through Oprah’s sorrowful childhood, she learned to become stronger than the tragedies by unleashing her magnificent strength. Her life had its twists and turns, such as times when she was sexually abused: “At the age of nine, and for several years thereafter, Winfrey was sexually abused by a teenage cousin, and then by other male relatives and family friends...She remained dedicated to a number of social causes, volunteering her time to help promote movements such as the MeToo campaign and the March for Our Lives” (“Oprah Winfrey”). Having a past that she could constantly be reminded of, Winfrey knew that she wasn't the only one suffering from this issue. She understands a problem and applies it to a cause. Winfrey teaches girls that it isn't the abuse that makes the person, it’s how they process it and prevent it from happening to anyone else. Abuse is not the only thing that Oprah Winfrey knows could be resolved. In her book The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights From Super Soul Conversations, Winfrey expands more on the topic of gaining success from learning to overcome personal issues: "What every one of these Super Soul Sunday [Winfrey’s podcast show] conversations has taught me is that no matter who you are, if you've been faking your way through life, ignoring your inner compass, the wake-up call can be harsh; job loss, the end of a relationship, money problems, disruption in any form. No matter how devastating, these are opportunities to stop sleepwalking through your life, wake up, and pay attention to the red flags, whispers, pebbles, and bricks along the way" (Winfrey, pp. 116-117).
Oprah Winfrey knows that tragedies tend to drain the hope out of a person, especially if that person hasn't been completely expressing their true self. Her podcast opened the mind of listeners and invites them to pay more attention to the person they can become instead of the person they were. Expanding more on the idea of overcoming hard moments in life, Winfrey confessed to PEOPLETV about the times she had been abused: “‘It happened to me at 9, and then 10, and then 11, and then 12, 13, 14. You don't have the language to begin to explain what’s happening to you… That’s why you feel you're not going to be believed. And if the abuser, the molester, is any good, they will make you feel that you are complicit, that you were part of it. That’s what keeps you from telling’” (Sands). Winfrey overcame her fear of the truth being released to give a girl the comfort to tell her story of being molested before in her lifetime. She heard others opening up about the abuse they experienced from Michael Jackson and decided that her stories should be heard, too. Oprah Winfrey uses the wisdom she gained from conquering her childhood struggles to educate others to show that they can do the same.
Winfrey uses her success and achievements to give to those who need support to overcome their own issues. Winfrey illustrates heroic generosity through her foundation: “She formed a private charity called the Oprah Winfrey Foundation to offer aid to educate and support women and opened a girls' school in South Africa” (“Oprah Winfrey”). Winfrey doesn't just use her wealth to benefit herself, she gave back to the less fortunate. She made sure that girls get the education and opportunities as they deserve, which isn't an option for some girls. She doesn't only want to support girls. She donates to make someone’s success possible: "An active fund-raiser, not necessarily for glamorous causes, she is philanthropic and fabulously generous. She set up a ‘Little Sisters’ program in Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing projects, to which she devotes time. She annually endows 10 scholarships to Tennessee State University, her alma mater. The story that she made her longtime and best friend Gayle King, a newscaster in Hartford, a millionaire with a Christmas check of $1,250,000 is part of the Oprah legend" (“Importance of Being Oprah”).
While others seek to hoard wealth, Winfrey seeks to share it with others. She makes it more useful to charity or students who can no longer afford their education. These donations do not only require money but time as well. Relating to using something other than money to give, Oprah Winfrey shares the stories of others’ tragic lives to help raise awareness: "Needing to get in touch with some visceral fury, Winfrey reached out to one of the students she calls “my girls” - a young woman from the South African leadership academy she famously endowed - and asked her to recount her experiences with an aunt who had beaten her. Winfrey had been beaten as a child, too, but time and other sources of healing blunted the pain to the point where, as she puts it, there was no ‘charge’ for her left" (Marks).
Oprah Winfrey's School for Girls in South AfricaOssewa [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]As someone that possess a large amount of wealth, she is able to supply others with education. Winfrey takes her power of creation to make something that will inform and spread awareness. She reveals her students' history of abuse to educate others and prevent any more assaults from happening. Oprah Winfrey traveled a long way to become successful, and she utilizes that in foundations, charities, movements, and causes to give a chance for success to others.
Oprah Winfrey is sincerely a black female hero who managed to thrive and spread generosity through the world. Her life may have started off harsh, but she learned how to move onward and prosper. Winfrey assisted others in fighting their battles. She took her success and provided others with the path they needed to succeed as well. In this society, black women aren't expected to have many capabilities. However, Winfrey inspires them to believe in themselves like she did. They absorb her wisdom and apply to their lives to become successful, too:
The woman herself embodies a message, and a sanguine one. It says: You can be born poor and black and female and make it to the top. In a racist society, the majority needs, and seeks, from time to time, proof that they are loved by the minority whom they have so long been accustomed to oppress, to fear exaggeratedly, or to treat with real or assumed disdain. They need that love, and they need to love in return, in order to believe that they are good. Oprah Winfrey—a one-person demilitarized zone—has served that purpose. (“Importance of Being Oprah”)
Winfrey has a way of opening opportunities, such as the all-girls school she started in South Africa. She takes people who feel hopeless about succeeding or feel apart from these words and includes them in this society to show the world that anyone can make it to the top. That’s what inspires me. Knowing that women like me are making it big in this country is important. We're not only black, but we're also girls. We deal with both racism and sexism, and Oprah Winfrey shows that we shouldn't allow that to get in the way of our prosperity. These black women who face discrimination, disrespect, and unappreciation can get back on their feet and mark their legacy for the next generation to look up to.
Works Cited
Marks, Peter. "In 'Henrietta Lacks,' Oprah Winfrey Reveals One woman's Remarkable Legacy."
Washington Post, 14 Apr. 2017. Biography In Context,
https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A489615703/BIC?u=powa9245&sid=BIC&xid=a53
2080. Accessed 25 Mar. 2019.
"Oprah Winfrey." Contemporary Black Biography, vol. 61, Gale, 2007. Biography In Context,
https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1606003719/BIC?u=powa9245&sid=BIC&xid=1f2d1734 Accessed 21 Mar. 2019.
Sands, Nicole. “Months Before Interviewing Michael Jackson Accusers, Oprah Winfrey Opened Up About Her Own Abuse.”
PEOPLE.com, Meredith Corporation, 5 Mar. 2019,
"The Importance of Being Oprah." American Decades Primary Sources, edited by Cynthia Rose, vol. 9: 1980-1989, Gale, 2004, pp. 447-451.
Biography In Context, https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX3490201761/BIC?u=powa9245&sid=BIC&xid=22252c94 Accessed 25 Mar. 2019.
Winfrey, Oprah. The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights From Super Soul
Conversations. Macmillan, 2017.
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Last edited 4/13/2019 7:34:37 PM
