Oprah Winfrey Family History

The American host and TV presenter Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29th, 1954 to Vernon Winfrey and Vernita Lee in Kosciusko, Mississippi.  It was after their one-time encounter under an oak tree.  They never married.

Today the house in which Winfrey was born has been razed and its location turned into a tourist attraction.  “On January 29, 1954, Oprah Winfrey was born in a wood frame house located on this site,” states the plaque.

Childhood Traumas.  Following Oprah’s birth, her mother traveled north to Wisconsin.  Oprah would spend her first six years living with her maternal grandmother in rural poverty in Kosciusko.   Her grandmother, a believer in the adage “spare the rod, spoil the child,” beat her almost daily.  Then, when she was six, Oprah rejoined her mother in Milwaukee where she was working long hours as a housemaid.

At thirteen Oprah ran away from home after suffering what she described as years of abuse.  A year later she became pregnant.  But her son was born prematurely and died shortly after birth.

Her mother sent her to live in Nashville with her father Vernon and his then-wife Zelma (who became something of a surrogate mother for her).  While in Tennessee she attended East Nashville High School, won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant at the age of seventeen, and earned a scholarship to Tennessee State University.

TV Career.  She began in TV after college.  Working in local media, Oprah was the youngest news anchor and also the first black female news anchor at Nashville’s WLAC-TV.  Neither would have surprised her grandmother.  She had once said that ever since Oprah could talk, she was on stage.

Her big break came in 1984 when she relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV’s morning talk show.  Two years later this show became The Oprah Winfrey Show and was expanded from half an hour to a full hour.  According to Time magazine in 1988:

“Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey’s swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV.  In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk.  But what she lacks compared to others in journalistic toughness, she more than makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and above all empathy.”

Born in rural poverty and raised by a mother dependent on Government welfare payments, Oprah became a millionaire at the age of thirty-two when her talk show received national syndication.

The Oprah Winfrey Show ran until 2011.  In 1993 she hosted a prime-time interview Michael Jackson Talks to Oprah.  This became the fourth most-watched event ever in American TV history with an audience of 36.5 million.

Oprah has remained active in TV presentation since 2011.  In 2021 she conducted an interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle which received global media attention.  In 2024 came AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special where she interviewed the likes of Sam Altman and Bill Gates.

Her Paternal Winfrey Line

The Winfrey surname comes from the Old English personal name Winfrid, derived from the elements win meaning “joy” and frid “peace.”  However, the name is rare in England.  But it is to be found in the southern states of the United States, most noticeably in Georgia.

Oprah’s Winfrey line came out of slavery and ran as follows:

• Constantine Winfrey from DeKalb, Georgia (1837-1910) m. Violet Hunt (1839-1917) in Poplar Creek, Mississippi in 1859
• Sanford Winfrey from Poplar Creek (1872-1949) m. Ella Staples (1874-1946) in Mississippi around 1898
• Elmore Winfrey from Poplar Creek (1901-1988) m. Beatrice Woods (1902-1999) in Mississippi around 1925.

Poplar Creek, Mississippi.  Constantine Winfrey, born a slave in Georgia, had married his wife Violet from North Carolina in Poplar Creek, Mississippi in 1859.  He made something of his life after emancipation.  He learnt to read and write.  And he worked hard for his white master picking cotton and finally was able to purchase his own land.

His son Sanford, a strict disciplinarian to his charges, was the school teacher at the local one-room school.  His son Elmore expanded the family’s land holdings in the area by his 104-acre purchase in 1942.  Elmore lived to greet Civil Rights activists in the 1960’s.  He was Vernon Winfrey’s father and Oprah’s paternal grandfather.

Their home at Poplar Creek lay in Montgomery county in central Mississippi.  It was and is a very small rural place.  The community did have its own post office.  But only seventy-five people were living there in 1906 and that included the Winfreys.  The hamlet is located some 15 miles northwest of the larger town of Kosciusko.

Vernon Winfrey.  Vernon Winfrey left this part of rural Mississippi, as did his elder brothers and sisters.  In his case it was after the birth of his daughter Oprah in Kosciusko.

In July 1955, a few weeks after he had ended his military service (he had previously served in the Korean War), he moved to Nashville, Tennessee in search of a better opportunity.  He had many jobs over the next eight years.  In 1963  he graduated from Hasla Barber College.  After serving a year and a half as an apprentice, he opened his own barber shop.

Oprah later paid tribute to him:

“My father was a barber in Nashville for over fifty years.  And for many years in the original barber shop there was a grocery store that he and another man owned.  That shop never closed.  Not during Christmas, not on weekends and not when I came to visit, not on any holidays.  The store was always open.

So much of my work ethic, the values that made me the woman I am today, came from watching my father show up, be there, and not letting people down no matter what.”

Vernon died in Nashville in 2022 at the age of eighty-nine.  His obituary noted:

“Vernon opened Winfrey’s Barber Shop in East Nashville in 1965.  He was an active member of the community, being from 1975 to 1991 on the Nashville Metropolitan Council.  He served on the Board of Trustees for Tennessee State University and Tennessee State Barber Board.  He was also a charter member of Faith United Missionary Baptist Church and a deacon for forty-five years.

In 2016 he was inducted into the National Barber Hall of Fame and honored for his 56 years as a master barber.”

Her Maternal Lee and Presley Lines

A genetic test in 2006 determined that Oprah’s matrilineal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group from an area that became Liberia.

In between came slavery.  Little is known about the Lees on her grandfather’s side here, except that his father Harry was born in Mississippi around 1872.  A bit more is known about the Presleys on her grandmother’s side.  They were first found in South Carolina and were recorded in Attala county, Mississippi by 1850.

• Robert Pressley (b. 1835) met Tilda in South Carolina and moved to Mississippi
• Nelson Presley (1872-1907) m. Amanda Winters (1874-1944) in Kosciusko, Attala county in 1893

Hard Times.  Unlike the Winfreys at this time, Nelson and Amanda Presley found life a struggle in rural Mississippi.  Nelson died young, around thirty-five, in 1907.  Amanda then remarried Charley Bullock and came into some land and money.  But this land and money would be lost to the bank.  And Amanda’s daughter Hattie Mae, together with her other surviving children from Nelson, grew up poor.

Hattie Mae Presley and Earlest Lee were married in Kosciusko in 1918.  Whereas they lived and died in rural Mississippi, many of their seven children moved elsewhere.  It was for black folks the time for a great migration north in the hopes of a better life.

Moving Away.  Lafayette Lee was a US Army veteran from the Korean War who ended up in Nevada.   Susie Mae moved to Ohio, Lamar to Chicago, and Vernita – the youngest of their children – to Milwaukee after the birth of her daughter Oprah.

Vernita had moved in 1954 to Milwaukee where she worked as a housemaid.  She was the mother of three further children.  Two of them died young (from cocaine addiction and from AIDS) and a third Patricia who was sent out for adoption (Patricia only discovered that Oprah was her half-sister in 2007).  Vermita herself died in Milwaukee in 2018.

Her relationship with her daughter Oprah was turbulent over the years.  But the two later reconciled, with Oprah supporting her mother in her final years.  However. her mother’s experience convinced Oprah never to have children herself.

Oprah and Her Half Sister

Oprah’s mother Vernita Lee gave birth to a baby daughter Patricia in Milwaukee in April 1963.  While she was expecting, she had not told the father about the pregnancy.  Baby Patricia then spent a month at the hospital before Vernita decided to place her into foster care.

Patricia moved around between different foster homes for seven years before a caring family, the Loftons, adopted her.

As she got older she wanted to find her real mother.  When she was twenty she reached out to the State of Wisconsin’s adoption agency, hoping to make a connection.  However, her requests were turned down.  Her birth mother did not want to meet her.

It was not until 2007, when she was in her mid-forties – a single mother with two young daughters – that she finally received her adoption papers.  She learnt then that she had two siblings who had died and one half-sibling who was alive.  And to her amazement that half-sibling was Oprah Winfrey!

A bit scared about approaching Oprah directly, Patricia made contact with Oprah’s niece Alisha who owned a restaurant in Milwaukee.  And she agreed to take a DNA test to prove that she was family.

After Oprah’s family learned about Patricia, they were unsure how to tell Oprah.  Finally someone found the courage to share the news.  Oprah was preparing to go on stage for her show when her assistant spoke to her and confirmed that Patricia was indeed her half-sister.  The two sisters met for the first time that Thanksgiving and it was an emotional moment for both of them.

The moment aired publicly when Oprah later introduced Patricia to viewers on The Oprah Winfrey Show, describing the reunion as one of the most meaningful experiences of her life.

Patricia had always dreamed of going to college and becoming a social worker.  Oprah decided to support her sister’s dream.  And she also bought a new home for her in Milwaukee.

 

Oprah Winfrey’s Family Tree

• Elmore Winfrey from Poplar Creek in Montgomery county, Mississippi (1901-1988) m. Beatrice Woods (1902-1999) around 1925
• – Lee Winfrey (1926-1984) m. Dimple Major, moved to Chicago
• – Overtis Winfrey (1927-2007), moved to Chicago
• – Maria Winfrey (1928-2017), moved to Chicago
• – Trenton Winfrey (1930-1997), moved to Chicago
• – Earline Winfrey (1931-2010) m. John Harrison
• – Vernon Winfrey (1933-2022)

• Vernon Winfrey and Vernita Lee (1935-2018) in Kosciusko, Mississippi in 1953.  Vernon moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1955 where he ran a barber’s shop.  Vernon m. Zelma Meyers (1931-1996) in Nashville in 1957; rem. Barbara Williams (b. 1948) in 2001, divorced in 2012.
• – Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954), with Vernita
• – Thomas (Tommy) Walker, adopted son with Zelma

• Erlester (Earlest) Lee (1883-1959) m. Hattie Mae Presley (1900-1963) in Kosciusko, Mississippi in 1918
• – Susie Mae Lee (1919-2006) m. Alonzo Peeler, moved to Ohio
• – Harold (Hal) Lee (1922-1991), remained in Mississippi
• – Willie Lee (1924-1992)
• – Hubert Lee (1929-1978)
• – Lamar Lee (1931-1987) m. Lucille Meredith, moved to Chicago
• – Lafayette Lee (1931-2000) m. Sharon, US army veteran, moved to Nevada
• – Vernita Lee (1935-2018)

• Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey (1933-2022) in Kosciusko, Mississippi in 1953.  Vernita later moved to Waukesha, Milwaukee where she was a mother of three further children with Willie Wright.
• – Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954), with Vernon
• – Patricia Lee (1959-2003) m. Kenny Lloyd, died of cocaine addiction
• – Jeffrey Lee (1960-1989), died of AIDS
• – Patricia Lofton nee Lee (b. 1963), daughter given away for adoption