Trail blazing media mogul, Oprah Gail Winfrey, fondly known as Oprah, turns 70 years old today. The ageless Amazon, with African ancestry traced to the Kpelle tribe of Liberia and the Bamileke tribe of Camroon, was not only a beauty queen at 17 but she was the very first African American female to start a TV talk show in 1986.
With a long list of successes, Oprah became the first African female billionaire in 2003 with a successful tv talk show spanning 25 years. The Oprah Winfrey Show, which started to air in Chicago, eventually got syndicated worldwide.
Despite centuries of hardships that African Americans have had to put up with, particularly Black males who are never recognized as builders of functional homes, Winfrey surprisingly credits her father’s love, protection and dedication to education for helping her grow into a rounded, accomplished African woman.
Born on January 29, 1954 on a farm in Kosciusko, Mississippi, her parents, Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey, sadly separated shortly after she was born, leaving toddler Oprah to be raised by her maternal grandmother
Amongst many glorious accomplishments of Oprah, which include founding a symbolic all-girls school in south Africa, and becoming a major force that helped enthrone Barack Obama as the first African American president, her TV interview with late music legend Michael Jackson in 1993, which garnered over 90 million views worldwide.
Oprah’s social media:
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