15 Celebrities With Shockingly Tragic Pasts
Photo credit: Gettyimages
6. Oprah Winfrey
Her accomplishments as a global media leader and philanthropist have established her as one of the most respected and admired public figures today.
Using the ever-growing power of media, Oprah Winfrey has been creating unparalleled connections with people around the world and has set her life goal to be helping others. But is this need to make other people happy coming from her own difficult and tragic childhood?
It is no small thing for a woman of African-American descent, and the story becomes even more remarkable when you learn the whole story of Oprah’s life. She was born into a broken family in Kosciusko, Mississippi, in 1954.
Her life was seriously deprived of life opportunities in general, given the geographic location and time she was born in. Her mother was a single-teenage-mom and that didn’t help their situation. People weren’t that open minded back then as they are now.
After Winfrey’s birth, her mother traveled north and little Oprah spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae, who was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which the local children made fun of her.
She spent much of her childhood living in the ghetto outside Milwaukee with her mother and half-siblings. However, Oprah says her success is simply a result of the non-stop work ethic impressed on her by her father later.
