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Oprah Winfrey: Tennessee State University
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Winfrey wins Nashville's Miss Fire Prevention contest. The pageant sponsor, a radio station, offers Winfrey a job reading the afternoon headlines on air. After being crowned Miss Black Tennessee in 1972, she competes in the Miss Black America competition, but her burgeoning news career and college studies end her pageant days. At 19, she becomes anchor of Nashville's WTVF-TV station and leaves Tennessee State University to be the first female African-American news anchor in Nashville.
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When she was seventeen, Oprah obtained a job at a local radio station in Nashville, Tennessee. Majoring in speech communications and performing arts at Tennessee State University, Winfrey continued to work in media throughout her college years. She signed on with WTVF-TV as a reporter/anchor. In 1976, Oprah graduated from college and moved to Baltimore, Maryland, for a position at the ABC affiliate as a co-anchor. Just two years later, the station offered Oprah an opportunity to co-host People Are Talking , a morning talk show (Encyclopaedia Britannica "Winfrey").
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Oprah Gail Winfrey grew up extremely poor in Mississippi. In 1971 she graduated from East Nashville High School in Nashville, Tennessee. She went on to Tennessee State University, graduating with a degree in Speech and Performing Arts.
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Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to unmarried parents who separated after her birth, Winfrey had a difficult childhood as a victim of sexual abuse. At the age of 13 she went to live with her father in Nashville, Tennessee, where she became an excellent student and won a scholarship to Tennessee State University. While in college Winfrey became the first black woman to anchor the news on the local Nashville television station.
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Even though her home life was extraordinarily difficult and scarring, Winfrey excelled in school. She even received a scholarship to Nicolet High School in Glendale, WI at the age of 13. There was ... a rebellious side to the teen Winfrey. She ran away from home and got pregnant a year after she was accepted to the school, but she lost the baby shortly after birth. Unable to control or provide for her daughter, Lee sent Winfrey to live with her father in Nashville, TN. Her studies became a priority and not long after, the girl who was raised on a farm and abused in the ghetto, won a full scholarship to attend Tennessee State University where she studied Communication.
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At the age of nineteen, Oprah landed her first job as a reporter for a radio station in Nashville. Shortly afterwards, she entered Tennessee State University to pursue a career in radio and television broadcasting. During her freshman year at TSU, Oprah won several pageants, including "Miss Black Nashville" and "Miss Tennessee."
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