WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH - OPRAH WINFREY

I found out yesterday that this month is Women's History Month so I would like to dedicate each day to an African American woman in history. My goal is to highlight a bit about each woman and also provide you with one of their quotes. As I blog about different African American women in history this month, I want all of my female and male readers to understand you too can become a part History.

"You don’t become what you want; you become what you believe."

Oprah Winfrey

While Oprah is known to many as the 1st African American billionaire, I learned that Bob Johnson (Black Entertainment Television) was the 1st African American billionaire and his wife Sheila after their divorce became the 1st African American woman billionaire. So, Miss Winfrey is the 2nd African American billionaire and the 1st self made African American woman millionaire.

Oprah Winfrey is truly the epitome of the American from rags to riches story, content via wikipedia.com:

Oprah Winfrey (born Oprah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American television host, actress, producer, and philanthropist, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history.[1] She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century,[2] the greatest black philanthropist in American history,[3][4] and was once the world's only black billionaire.[5][6] She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.[7][8]

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at the age of nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy.[9] Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place[5] she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication,[10] she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized[10][11] the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue,[10] which a Yale study claims broke 20th century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream.[12][13] By the mid 1990s, she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture and promoting controversial self-help aids,[14] she is often praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.[15] From 2006 to 2008, her support of Barack Obama, by one estimate, delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race.[16]

Be blessed and be a blessing,
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