Born in rural Mississippi to a young mother in 1954, a fun fact that some people are still surprised to learn about Oprah is that her now iconic name is

not what her mother intended it to be.

The name on her birth certificate is “Orpah,” which is a biblical reference from the Book of Ruth, but apparently Oprah was much easier for people to say so it

stuck. As a child, Oprah lived with her grandmother, and they were so poor that she sometimes had to wear clothing fashioned out of potato sacks.

“Those early years were challenging years because I was living in an apartheid state,” Oprah said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “Mississippi from 1954 to 1961 when

I lived there was not much different from apartheid South Africa.” She recounted not being allowed to go into White stores and living in a very small house with no

running water or electricity.

Oprah says that she grew up in “an environment where children were seen and not heard,” and that she was beaten “regularly” as a child. Sometimes the beatings lasted

until she bled, and then she was beaten again for getting blood on her clothes.

Oprah’s mother found work in Milwaukee during the Great Migration, and when her grandmother became ill, the six-year-old was sent to live in Wisconsin.

Oprah’s grandmother taught her how to read, and on her first day of kindergarten she was moved up to the 1st grade after writing her teacher a letter with all

the big words she knew, many from the Bible, but also “elephant” and “hippopotamus.”

Oprah also skipped the second grade because she was so smart. She credits her stepmother for getting her hooked on books and building her vocabulary during summer stays with her

father, a love that she has maintained through adulthood.

So Oprah was out of the small house in the South and getting an education, but in some ways things got worse. At age 9, she was raped by her

cousin. “He took me to an ice cream shop — blood still running down my leg — and bought me ice cream,” she once told David Letterman.

“That just started me on a spiral downwards,” Oprah said. “Now, I realize that I didn’t even have the language...I wasn’t going to tell. It never occurred to me to

tell because the cousin said, ‘Don’t tell,’ and I wouldn’t have told because I thought somehow I would have been blamed for it.”

Oprah was sexually abused several times between the ages of 9 and 14, but she says that the experiences are what has given her the passion to help others through

similar situations. 

“The very experience of it, of being seduced by the cousin and later being seduced by boyfriends of my mother, or boyfriends of grown cousins, older men, uncles...I now understood

how it happens. That’s why, being an activist, being a person who is interested in hearing the stories and outing molesters has been such a passion for me.”

At 14, Oprah made the decision to leave Milwaukee and move to be with her father in Nashville. “I hit rock bottom,” she told THR. She was hiding the fact

that she had become pregnant by her uncle, and was considering suicide. 

“I had planned to kill myself actually. I thought there was no way out other than killing myself...If I had the internet then I might not be alive, because now

you can just Google how to do it.”

Before she could kill herself, Oprah had a miscarriage. Oprah later said that the baby gave her a “new life.” That, combined with the structure and discipline from her father

to focus on education, started her on the path to becoming the Oprah we know today.

"My father said to me, 'You have another chance. If I were you, I’d take it.'" Oprah says that his words became her “spiritual mantra...I went back to school and

became an orator, speaker, student council, all that which would have never happened had I come to term and had a child."

She became an honor roll student, and after winning a beauty contest and speaking on the radio for the first time, she landed a job at a local Black station.

Oprah graduated high school with a full scholarship to Tennessee State University.

Oprah went from Nashville to a job in Baltimore at age 22, where she was sexually harassed, bullied, and fired after less than eight months as a co-anchor on a

popular TV program.

“Not all my memories of Baltimore are fond ones," Oprah said. "But I do have fond memories of Baltimore, because it grew me into a real woman. I came

in naive, unskilled, not really knowing anything about the business — or about life. And Baltimore grew me up."

Not long after, Oprah landed in Illinois on a show with low ratings called “AM Chicago.” Soon, it was the highest rated show in its market, and after

three short years it was renamed “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

That is by no means the end of Oprah's story, but we all know what happens next: 25 seasons, millions

of lives changed, billions of dollars earned, and a place in the history books not only as one of the most powerful African American women in television, but as one

of the wealthiest and most influential people to have ever lived.