Oprah Winfrey

(From 3:35 to 5:18)

I remember the first time at ten years old seeing Diana Ross on the Ed Sullivan Show--we were still 'colored people'--and we would--y'all know who were formerly colored--we used to call everybody when there were other colored people on, because it was so rare. So it'd be like, "Colored people on, right now! Turn on channel 7, colored people are on!" And by the time you called everybody you knew, the colored people would be off the TV.

But I remember seeing Diana Ross, and many years later being able to interview her and standing before her trembling because I remember the moment seeing Diana Ross--ten years old, sitting on, by this time, my linoleum floor, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had gotten out of Mississippi--and having the feeling that Nikki Giovanni expressed in her Poem to Flora. Flora, she says, was colored and went to Sunday school and heard about Nebuchadnezzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fire. And one day she was told of Sheba--Sheba, who was black, and comely. And Flora said, "Ah, I want to be like that!"

So when I saw Diana Ross on the Ed Sullivan Show--wigs and all--I said, "I want to be like that! I want some of that!" And spent many years of my life trying to be like Diana Ross. And realized, in my early twenties, that I could be a better Oprah than I could be a Diana. And that no matter what I did, I was never gonna' have her thighs.

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