Oprah Winfrey: Talk-Show Inspiration

Talk-Show Inspiration

The circumstances surrounding the birth of a female infant in Kosciusko, Miss., on Jan. 29, 1954, were not promising. Present was the usual mix that had so often accumulated into a burden too heavy for a single-parent household like the one Oprah Winfrey grew up in. The state in which she was born had laws in place waiting to characterize her as unwelcome, to bar her participation in otherwise acceptable social activities, to shackle her to the residue of slavery and other injustices of the past. The simple truth is that her grandmother, her great-grandmother and all the great-great-grandmothers before them...

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