Jan. 29, 1954

Oprah Winfrey, who became the first Black female billionaire in U.S. history, was born to a single teen mother in Kosciusko, Mississippi. She was named after a biblical character in Ruth, Orpah, which was mispronounced, and she became Oprah. 

Raised initially by her grandmother, she was so impoverished that she often wore dresses made of potato sacks. Other children teased her and made fun of her. 

At age 6, she was sent to inner-city Milwaukee to live with her mother. While growing up, she was molested and became pregnant at 14. The son she gave birth to, born prematurely, died in infancy. She then went to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, in Nashville. She became an honors student, was voted Most Popular Girl and won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant at the age of 17. 

While still in high school, she landed a job at a local Black radio station. By age 19, she was co-anchoring the local news station. In 1976, she began hosting the TV chat show in Baltimore, “People are Talking,” which became a hit. In 1986, she became the first Black female TV talk show host with “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” 

The biggest host at the time was Phil Donahue. Within months, Winfrey’s warm ways caused her to go from worst to first in the ratings, and she never looked back, hosting the most successful talk show in U.S. history. 

She won 18 Daytime Emmy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, a Peabody Award and was twice nominated for an Academy Award, winning its humanitarian award. In 2003, she became the first Black woman to reach billionaire status, according to Forbes magazine. A year later, she became the first Black American to reach BusinessWeek’s Annual Ranking of “America’s Top Philanthropists.” 

She stopped hosting the talk show in 2011, but she never stopped, continuing her Oprah Book Club and magazine and expanding her media empire by creating the OWN Network. In 2013, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

With President Donald Trump elevating bans of diversity, equity and inclusion programs to the top of national Republicans’ education agenda, Mississippi lawmakers are working to shutter DEI across the state’s higher education system.

Lawmakers in Mississippi’s Republican-dominated Legislature have for months considered the issue and met with university officials. Now, legislators will decide how far they will go in rooting out DEI in the state’s colleges and universities. They are determining what academic concepts count as “divisive” and what legal recourse to provide students and faculty who feel wronged by DEI-related initiatives.   

DEI programs have come under fire mostly from conservatives, who say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors, exacerbate antisemitism and infuse left-wing ideology into every facet of campus life. DEI also has progressive critics, who say the programs can be used to feign support for reducing inequality without actually doing so. Proponents say the programs are necessary to ensure that institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse student populations.

Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to root out DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he has signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee. With the national headwinds at their backs and several other DEI bans in Republican-led states to use as models, Mississippi lawmakers are poised in 2025 to move forward with legislation targeting the programs. 

In the House, Republican Reps. Donnie Scoggin, Joey Hood and Becky Currie have introduced bills to clamp down on DEI. Scoggin, Chair of the House Universities and Colleges Committee, said negotiations around the proposals are ongoing, but Hood’s bill is the leading contender to move forward.   

Hood’s bill would eliminate diversity training programs that “increase awareness or understanding of issues related to race, sex or other federally protected classes.” It would also seek to regulate academic instruction, barring universities from offering courses that promote “divisive concepts,” including “transgender ideology, gender-neutral pronouns, heteronormativity, gender theory, sexual privilege or any related formulation of these concepts.” 

Scoggin said the Legislature should settle on a finished product that is “semi-vague” in its language to protect universities from a flurry of legal challenges and funding cuts by the state. 

“There may be a professor that gets out here in left field somewhere. Well, the administration may not know it until they’re notified,” Scoggin said. “It’s about trying to be vague enough that we’re not hurting the college, yet strong enough that we’re getting the message across.”

After falling short with little discussion at the Capitol in 2024, the push to write DEI restrictions into state law picked up steam after a growing chorus of lawmakers said voluntary moves by universities to limit DEI programs were insufficient, Scoggin said. 

He said he and Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, chairwoman of the Senate Universities and Colleges Committee, made it clear to university administrators that DEI programs, excluding those that benefit groups such as veterans and disabled students, needed to be whittled down.  

“We met with the college presidents and said ‘OK we would like, and when I say we, I mean myself and Sen. Boyd, we would like for y’all to govern yourselves and do what you want to do. But you know what you’ve got to do,” Scoggin said. “Make it happen.”

Over the summer, after other states banned DEI, the University of Mississippi restructured its Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. Other Mississippi universities also made changes to their diversity offices.

Scoggin and Boyd both said in interviews with Mississippi Today that they consulted campus administrators when writing their proposals to restrict DEI.

There are two bills in the Senate aimed at regulating DEI, one from Boyd and the other from Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune. Boyd’s proposal will be the vehicle for action in the chamber, as Hill’s bill was “double referred” to two committees for first consideration, a likely indication it won’t move forward.

Unlike some other proposals, Boyd’s legislation does not create a private cause of action that might encourage students to sue employees or administrators accused of violating the law. It would instead require universities and community colleges to adopt a confidential complaint and discipline process for employees of an institution who violate the law.

“I looked for us to create a procedure where a college student who thought that they were not being judged on their own merit because of various policies, that they didn’t have to go to court and file a lawsuit to do that, and that they could use the policies and procedures in the administration to go and object,” Boyd said.

Her bill also includes language that would increase data collection on enrollment and graduation rates at state institutions.

The policy details are unfolding amid the early stages of a potential Republican primary matchup in the 2027 governor’s race between State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

White, who has been one of the state’s loudest advocates for banning DEI, has branded Hosemann “DEI Delbert,” claiming the Senate leader has stood in the way of DEI restrictions passing the Legislature. Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, a Hosemann ally, chided White last week for contracting with a management consulting firm that maintains a robust DEI practice.

The Senate Universities and Colleges Committee could take up DEI legislation as soon as its Thursday committee meeting.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Landon Bryant is a top-notch educator. Whether it is in an art classroom or on Instagram discussing one of the South’s little idiosyncrasies, he has an ability to explain things in a hilarious way.  Known online as LandonTalks, he and his wife Kate have created clever short videos that have tickled the nation’s funny bone. I visited him in his hometown of Laurel (where it all began and continues to this day.)  We traveled to the Lauren Rogers Museum and toured downtown, all while he gave us a glimpse into his brilliant imagination. No longer in the classroom, Landon fills his time as a stand-up comic, author, podcaster, and commentator on all things Southern. It’s fun to watch good people succeed.  And in this episode, you’ll get to know the good man behind the meteoric success story. 

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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.