The Success Of Oprah Winfrey As A Social Activist

Oprah’s father brought her on a visit back to Milwaukee to see her mother. She spent the summer there and again, her mother was often absent. When her father returned to take her back to Nashville, Oprah surprisingly said she would rather stay with her mother. She wanted to please her. Living with her mother again, she deeply wished for love and affection. Since her mother was often at work, she left her children with a babysitter, which was Oprah’s older cousin. Her male relatives and the friends of her mother repeatedly abused her, both sexually and physically. This abuse left her physically and emotionally traumatized. Eventually she began acting out. She stole money from her mother and skipped school. She tried to run away from home. This was an unsuccessful venture and she ended up in juvenile detention, where she was then turned away due to lack of room at the institution.
By age 14, Oprah Winfrey was out on her own. She no longer lived with her mother full time and instead roamed the streets of Milwaukee, on a bad path. Eventually, her mother …show more content…
Oprah Winfrey is extremely involved in a numerous amount of philanthropic activities and charities benefiting the greater good of humanity. In 1993, with the help of the president of the time Bill Clinton, Oprah was able to help pass the National Child Protection Act, which was soon dubbed the “Oprah Bill”. Fueled by the motivation of her own personal experiences of child abuse, Oprah initiated a campaign to establish a national database of convicted child abusers. She went to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and testified, displaying her viewpoints on the issue and on behalf of a National Child Protection Act. When President Clinton signed the act into law, it was able to establish the national database in which she had sought. Today, it is available to law enforcement agencies in all 50