The abuse ended when she was fourteen years old; Oprah credits her father for saving her from the abuse. Oprah had a son when she was 14 years old who died as an infant.Because of her teen pregnancy, she often had suicidal thoughts. As a teen, she learned 20 new vocabulary words a week and she was crowned Miss Black Tennessee in 1972. In highschool, Oprah was elected President of Student Council and she was also selected “most popular” in high school as a senior. She graduated from Nicolet High School
Melba Pattillo was born on December 7, 1941, in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Beals grew up surrounded by family members who knew the importance of an education. Her mother, Lois Marie Pattillo, PhD, was one of the first black graduates of the University Of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1954 and was a high school English teacher at the time of the crisis. Her father, Howell Pattillo, worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. She had one brother, Conrad, who served as a U.S. marshal in Little Rock, and they all lived with her grandmother, India Peyton.
Ida Tarbell Ida Tarbell was born in 1857, only two years before the birth of the oil industry; key event that would later have a major impact in Ida’s label of Muckraker. At the age of three; her father, Franklin Tarbell, moved his family to a small oil town in Rouseville. There, Ida spent her childhood attending Mrs. Rice’s home school and playing amongst the oil derricks. In the article "Pioneer Women of the Oil Industry," written in 1934, Ida speaks of the problems her mother and many other women had civilizing the oil towns. Around the year 1870 the Tarbells moved to Titusville; where a church and school were already established.
As a whole, the class had to read the book named "The Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. After completing the task of reading 'The Christmas Carol", the next thing that was required of us was to write an essay on the book. The Shakespeare book I read for freshman year was Julius Caesar. Writing an essay for this type of book was difficult because of the type of literature it was but as I did my research it became much easier. As I continued in high school, we had to read "A Gathering of Old Men" by Ernest Gaines and "When I Was a Puerto Rican" by Esmeralda Santiago over the summer and write what was required of us.
Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born prematurely at 4.5 pounds (2.0 kg), the 20th of 22 siblings from two marriages;[4][3] her father Ed was a railway porter and her mother Blanche a maid. [9] Rudolph contracted infantile paralysis (caused by the polio virus) at age four. She recovered, but wore a brace on her left leg and foot (which had become twisted as a result) until she was nine. She was required to wear an orthopaedic shoe for support of her foot for another two years. Her family traveled regularly from Clarksville, Tennessee, to Meharry Hospital (now Nashville General Hospital at Meharry) in Nashville, Tennessee for treatments for her twisted leg.
Yet, this amazing runner had spent much of her childhood unable to walk because of polio. After the 1960 Olympics ,Wilma was a hero to people all over the United States. She and her parents were invited to the White House to meet president John f.Kennedy. Wilma retired from racing in 1962 after several more thrilling wins .She finished college in 1963,then taught school and served as a coach. Wilma married Robert Eldridge and raised two daughters and sons.
[4][5] Hanks's parents divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children, Sandra (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer), Larry (now Lawrence M. Hanks, PhD, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)[6] and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California. Afterwards, both parents remarried. Hanks's first stepmother came to the marriage with five children of her own. Hanks once told Rolling Stone: "Everybody in my family likes each other.
At age 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant. She also attracted the attention of the local black radio station, WVOL, which hired her to do the news part-time. She worked there during her senior year of high school, and again while in her first two years of college. Winfrey's career choice in media would not have surprised her grandmother, who once said that ever since Winfrey could talk, she was on stage. As a child she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family's property.
The autobiography is now frequently read as a complement to non fictional works that delve into the subject of racism. The autobiography tells that the strength of character and a love of literature helped Maya Angelou overcoming racism and trauma. The autobiography begins with three years old Maya and her older brother Bailey, they both are sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother and ends when Maya becomes a mother at the age of 16. Angelou was challenged by her friend, author James Baldwin, and her editor, Robert Loomis, to write an autobiography that was also a piece of literature. Reviewers often categorize I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as autobiographical fiction because Angelou uses thematic development and other techniques common to fiction, but some critical view
Her father was a social worker and executive secretary of the YMCA and her mother was a teacher. When she was young her parents would read to her the works of the great black writers. She grew up in Cleveland and attended Ohio State University where she experienced her first taste of racial strife, but still received a bachelor's degree in education in 1953. She began writing novels, short stories, and poems while still in college and a month after graduation she was married. The family moved to New York City so Kennedy could attend graduate school at Columbia University.