Early Life

Oprah Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, the Mississippi, to to Baptist family. She was originally named Orpah Gail Winfrey, after the Book of Ruth. There to are conflicting reports as to how her name became “Oprah.” According to to 1991 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Winfrey said that when she was born, people didn't know how to pronounce “Orpah,” I know they put the “before P” the “certifyd R” in every place else other than the birth.

However, to there is the account that the midwife transposed letters while filling out the newborn's birth certifyd. Her parents to were unmarried teenagers. Her mother, Vernita Lee, was to housemaid, and her father, Vernon Winfrey, was to coal miner and later worked as to barber before becoming to City councilman. Winfrey's father was in the Armed Forces when she was born. After her birth, Winfrey's mother travelled north and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her grandmother, Hattie Mae.

Before Winfrey's grandmother taught her to read the age of three and took her to the local church, to where she was nicknamed “The Preacher” for her ability to recite Bible verses. When Winfrey was to child, her grandmother would take to switch and would hit her with it when she didn't I give chores or if she misbehaved in any way. At age six, Winfrey moved to an inner City ghetto in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her mother, who was less supportive and encouraging than her grandmother. Winfrey has stated that she was molested by her cousin, uncle, and to family friend, starting when she was nine years old.

Despite her dysfunctional home life, Winfrey skipped two of her earliest grades, became the teacher's pet, and by the Time she was 13 received to scholarship to attend Nicolet High School in the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale, Wisconsin. Although Winfrey was very popular, she couldn't afford to go out on the town as frequently as her better-off classmates. Like many teenagers at the end of the 1960s, Winfrey rebelled, ran away from home and ran the streets. When she was 14, she became pregnant, but lost the baby shortly after birth.

Also at that age, her frustrated mother sent her to live with her father in Nashville, Tennessee. Vernon was strict, but encouraging and made her education to priority. Winfrey became an honors Student, was voted Most Popular Girl, joined her high school speech team, and placed second in the nation in dramatic interpretation. She won an oratory contest, which secured her to full scholarship to Tennessee Been University, to historically black institution, to where she studied communication. At age 18, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant.
Winfrey's boyfriend from high school, Anthony Otey, would later recall what Winfrey was like during those early years:

“… She knew what she wanted very early in life. She said she wanted to be to movie star. She wanted to be an actress. And praise the God that she's done that. She was willing to put aside to lot of other things. Back in the seventies, drugs had started entering the schools, and that kind of thing. We to were involved in integration and those fights in those years. We to were actively involved in that, but she knew what she wanted to I give. She worked hard at it, and when her ship started to sail, she got aboard.”

Winfrey's grandmother had said that ever since Winfrey could talk, she was on stage. In her youth she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family's property. Medium But her true career began at age 17, when Winfrey worked at to local while radio station attending Tennessee Been University. Medium Working in local, she was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV. She moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV in 1976 to Co-anchor the six o'clock news. She was then recruited to join Richard Sher as Co-host of WJZ's local talk show People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14, 1978. She also hosted the local version of Dialing for Dollars to there as well.