Oprah won a scholarship to study speech and drama at TSU, but the school offered no records of such a scholarship, and Vernon dismissed the suggestion when he stood in his barbershop, proudly declaring, “This place put Oprah through college.”
In 1971, Fisk was considered the black Harvard, the university for elites of color. Tennessee State University was for the sons and daughters of the black working class. This distinction was not lost on Oprah, who told
Interview
magazine, “I went to [TSU but] there was another black college in town where all the vanilla creams went. I thought it was a better school but I wouldn’t go just because I didn’t want to have to compete with the vanilla creams because they always got all the guys.”
Oprah later told
People
magazine that she “hated, hated, hated” her college. “Now I bristle when somebody comes up and says they went to Tennessee State with me. Everybody was angry for four years. It was an all-black college, and it was in to be angry. Whenever there was any conversation on race, I was on the other side, maybe because I never felt the kind of repression other black people are exposed to. I think I was called ‘nigger’ once, when I was in fifth grade.” She said her aversion to TSU stemmed from black activism on campus, and as she told Mike Wallace on
60 Minutes,
she was “not a dashiki-wearing kind of woman.”
When she realized that the ruling class in America hailed from theIvy League she was even more embarrassed about TSU. During her 2008 webcast with Eckhart Tolle she said she did not like to be identified by where she went to college. “[It]…annoys me [when] people will say, ‘What school did you go to?’ That’s immediately to say whether or not you’re in the[ir] category.” She probably found the question irritating because she felt diminished by her college credentials.
Understandably, Oprah engendered bitterness among some TSU classmates, who dismissed her comments about the school as complete fabrications by someone trying to ingratiate herself with a white audience. “TSU was not like what Oprah said it was—maybe it was in the early sixties, but not when we were there,” said Barbara Wright, who, like Oprah, was from the class of ’75. “I came from the North because I wanted to go to a historically black college. We all wore Afro puffs in those days, like Angela Davis, but we were not marching in the streets.” Known for her raised fist and struggle for black liberation, Davis, a former UCLA philosophy professor, made international news in 1970 when her gun was linked to the murder of a white judge in a courtroom battle that killed four people. She fled the jurisdiction but was arrested, detained, and harassed. After awaiting trial for twenty-two months, she was finally exonerated by an all-white jury in one of the most famous trials in U.S. history.
“We were real traditional kids who wanted the college experience of being away from home, living on campus, and joining a sorority,” said Barbara Wright. “Oprah was not a part of our college life at all, probably because she was grown beyond her years, as we all found out later. How are you going to be friends with those who haven’t experienced such? Also, Oprah was a townie who did not live on campus and did not get asked to join a sorority. Whenever she was around, she was hanging out at Fisk.”
Oprah was drawn to Fisk like a hummingbird to sugar water. “She would go there every chance she got,” said Sheryl Harris Atkinson, another TSU classmate. “We took a speech and communication class together as freshmen. Speech was her major; mine was education, but the class was a required course for both of us. There were fifteen in the class, and Oprah sat right next to me. ‘You seem really sweet and so I’m going to help you become a better communicator,’ she said. Shementored me in that class. We were peers, but she decided that I was her student, probably because I
In 1971, Fisk was considered the black Harvard, the university for elites of color. Tennessee State University was for the sons and daughters of the black working class. This distinction was not lost on Oprah, who told
Interview
magazine, “I went to [TSU but] there was another black college in town where all the vanilla creams went. I thought it was a better school but I wouldn’t go just because I didn’t want to have to compete with the vanilla creams because they always got all the guys.”
Oprah later told
People
magazine that she “hated, hated, hated” her college. “Now I bristle when somebody comes up and says they went to Tennessee State with me. Everybody was angry for four years. It was an all-black college, and it was in to be angry. Whenever there was any conversation on race, I was on the other side, maybe because I never felt the kind of repression other black people are exposed to. I think I was called ‘nigger’ once, when I was in fifth grade.” She said her aversion to TSU stemmed from black activism on campus, and as she told Mike Wallace on
60 Minutes,
she was “not a dashiki-wearing kind of woman.”
When she realized that the ruling class in America hailed from theIvy League she was even more embarrassed about TSU. During her 2008 webcast with Eckhart Tolle she said she did not like to be identified by where she went to college. “[It]…annoys me [when] people will say, ‘What school did you go to?’ That’s immediately to say whether or not you’re in the[ir] category.” She probably found the question irritating because she felt diminished by her college credentials.
Understandably, Oprah engendered bitterness among some TSU classmates, who dismissed her comments about the school as complete fabrications by someone trying to ingratiate herself with a white audience. “TSU was not like what Oprah said it was—maybe it was in the early sixties, but not when we were there,” said Barbara Wright, who, like Oprah, was from the class of ’75. “I came from the North because I wanted to go to a historically black college. We all wore Afro puffs in those days, like Angela Davis, but we were not marching in the streets.” Known for her raised fist and struggle for black liberation, Davis, a former UCLA philosophy professor, made international news in 1970 when her gun was linked to the murder of a white judge in a courtroom battle that killed four people. She fled the jurisdiction but was arrested, detained, and harassed. After awaiting trial for twenty-two months, she was finally exonerated by an all-white jury in one of the most famous trials in U.S. history.
“We were real traditional kids who wanted the college experience of being away from home, living on campus, and joining a sorority,” said Barbara Wright. “Oprah was not a part of our college life at all, probably because she was grown beyond her years, as we all found out later. How are you going to be friends with those who haven’t experienced such? Also, Oprah was a townie who did not live on campus and did not get asked to join a sorority. Whenever she was around, she was hanging out at Fisk.”
Oprah was drawn to Fisk like a hummingbird to sugar water. “She would go there every chance she got,” said Sheryl Harris Atkinson, another TSU classmate. “We took a speech and communication class together as freshmen. Speech was her major; mine was education, but the class was a required course for both of us. There were fifteen in the class, and Oprah sat right next to me. ‘You seem really sweet and so I’m going to help you become a better communicator,’ she said. Shementored me in that class. We were peers, but she decided that I was her student, probably because I
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