Supporting standards comprise
35% of the U. S. History Test
26 (D)
Supporting Standard (26)
The student understands how people from various
groups contribute to our national identity.
The Student is expected to:
(D) Identify the political, social, & economic
contributions women such as Frances Willard,
Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dolores
Huerta, Sonia Sotomayor, & Oprah Winfrey to
American society
Supporting Standard (26)
The student understands how people from various
groups contribute to our national identity.
The Student is expected to:
(D) 1 Identify the political, social, & economic
contributions women such as Frances Willard
to American society
Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (1839–1898) was
an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's
suffragist. Her influence was instrumental in the passage
of the Eighteenth (Prohibition) and Nineteenth (Women
Suffrage) Amendments to the United States Constitution.
Willard became the national president of Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1879, and
remained president for 19 years. She developed the slogan
“Do everything” for the women of the WCTU to incite
lobbying, petitioning, preaching, publication, and
education. Her vision progressed to include federal aid to
education, free school lunches, unions for workers,
the eight-hour work day, work relief for the poor,
municipal sanitation and boards of health, national
transportation, strong anti-rape laws, and protections
against child abuse.
During her family’s stay in Wisconsin, they
converted
from Congregationalists to Methodists, a
Protestant denomination that placed an emphasis
on social justice and service to the world.
Willard’s time at the Northwestern Female
College led her to become a teacher and she held
various teaching positions until she became the
President of Evanston College for Ladies. She
held this position on two separate occasions, once
in 1871 and again in 1873. She was also the first
Dean of Women for Northwestern University.
Willard focused her energies on a new
career, traveling the American East Coast
participating in the women’s temperance
movement. Her tireless efforts for women’s
suffrage and prohibition included a fiftyday speaking tour in 1874, an average of
30,000 miles of travel a year, and an average
of four hundred lectures a year for a tenyear period, mostly with her longtime
companion Anna Adams Gordon.
In 1874, Willard participated in the creation of
the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
where she was elected the first corresponding
secretary. That same year, she was invited to become
the President of the Chicago WCTU; and accepted the
position. In 1876, she became head of the national
WCTU publications committee. She later resigned
from the Chicago WCTU in 1877, but ran and was
elected president of the National WCTU in
1879. Willard was elected the first president of
the National Council of Women of the United States in
1888, a position which she held for the remainder of
her life. She created the Formed Worldwide WCTU in
1883, and was elected its president in 1888.
Supporting Standard (26)
The student understands how people from various
groups contribute to our national identity.
The Student is expected to:
(D) 2 Identify the political, social, & economic
contribution s women such as Jane Addams to
American society
Jane Addams (1860–1935) was a pioneer settlement social
worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader
in women’s suffrage and world peace. In an era when presidents
such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified
themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of
the most prominent reformers of the Progressive Era. She helped
turn the US to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of
children, public health, and world peace. She said that if women
were to be responsible for cleaning up their communities and
making them better places to live, they needed the vote to be
effective in doing so. Addams became a role model for middleclass women who volunteered to uplift their communities. She is
increasingly being recognized as a member of the American
pragmatist school of philosophy. In 1931 she became the first
American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is
recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the
United States.
Jane Addams gathered inspiration from what
she read. Fascinated by the early Christians
and Tolstoy’s book My Religion, she was
baptized a Christian in the Cedarville
Presbyterian Church, in the summer of
1886. Reading Giuseppe Mazzini’s Duties of
Man, she began to be inspired by the idea
of democracy as a social ideal. Yet she felt
confused about her role as a woman. John
Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women made
her question the social pressures on a woman
to marry and devote her life to family.
In the summer of 1887, Addams read in a magazine
about the new idea of starting a settlement house. She
decided to visit the world’s first, Toynbee Hall,
in London. She and several friends, including Ellen
Gates Starr, traveled in Europe from December 1887
through the summer of 1888. At first, Addams told no
one about her dream to start a settlement house; but,
she felt increasingly guilty for not acting on her
dream. Believing that sharing her dream might help
her to act on it, she told Ellen Gates Starr. Starr loved
the idea and agreed to join Addams in starting a
settlement house. In 1889 Addams and her college
friend and partner Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull
House in Chicago, Illinois, the first settlement
house in the United States.
Addams and Starr were the first two occupants of the house,
which would later become the residence of about 25 women. At
its height, Hull House was visited each week by some 2,000
people. Its facilities included a night school for
adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public
kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gym, a girls’ club, a
bathhouse, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, and
a library, as well as labor-related divisions. Her adult night
school was a forerunner of the continuing education classes
offered by many universities today. In addition to making
available social services and cultural events for the largely
immigrant population of the neighborhood, Hull House
afforded an opportunity for young social workers to acquire
training. Eventually, Hull House became a 13-building
settlement complex, which included a playground and a
summer camp (known as Bowen Country Club).
Addams was a major synthesizing figure in the
domestic and international peace movements,
serving as both a figurehead and leading
theoretician; she was influenced especially by
Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and by the pragmatism
of philosophers John Dewey and George Herbert
Mead. She envisioned democracy, social justice and
peace as mutually reinforcing; they all had to advance
together to achieve any one. Addams became an antiwar activist from 1899, as part of the anti-imperialist
movement that followed the Spanish–American War.
Her book Newer Ideals of Peace (1907) reshaped the
peace movement worldwide to include ideals of
social justice.
Addams’s work came to fruition after World War I, when
major institutional bodies began to link peace with social
justice and probe the underlying causes of war and
conflict. After 1915 Addams centered her interests in the
peace movement. She was a leader at the International
Congress of Women at The Hague, Holland, in 1915 and
presided at the first meeting of the Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in Zurich,
Switzerland, in 1919, which she served as president. Hull
House and the Peace Movement are widely recognized as
the key tangible pillars of Addams’ legacy. While her life
focused on the development of individuals, her ideas
continue to influence social, political and economic reform
in the United States as well as internationally.
Supporting Standard (26)
The student understands how people from various
groups contribute to our national identity.
The Student is expected to:
(D) 3 Identify the political, social, & economic
contributions women such as Eleanor Roosevelt
to American society
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) was an
American politician. She was the longestserving First Lady of the United States, holding
the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during
her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
four terms in office. President Harry S.
Truman later called her the “First Lady of the
World” in tribute to her human
rights achievements. A member of
the Roosevelt and Livingston families, Eleanor
had an unhappy childhood, suffering the deaths
of both parents and one of her brothers at a
young age.
She married her fifth cousin, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, in 1905. Eleanor resolved
to seek fulfillment in a public life of her
own. She persuaded Franklin to stay in
politics following his partial paralysis from
polio, and began to give speeches and
campaign in his place. After Franklin’s
election as Governor of New York, Eleanor
regularly made public appearances on his
behalf. She had also shaped the role of
First Lady during her tenure and beyond.
Though widely respected in her later years, Roosevelt
was a controversial First Lady for her outspokenness,
particularly her stance on racial issues. She was the
first presidential spouse to hold press conferences,
write a syndicated newspaper column, and speak at a
national convention. On a few occasions, she publicly
disagreed with her husband’s policies. She launched
an experimental community at Arthurdale, West
Virginia, for the families of unemployed miners, later
widely regarded as a failure. She advocated for
expanded roles for women in the workplace, the civil
rights of African Americans and Asian Americans,
and the rights of World War II refugees.
Following her husband’s death, Eleanor remained
active in politics for the rest of her life. She pressed
the US to join and support the United Nations and
became one of its first delegates. She served as the
first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights,
and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. Later she chaired the John F.
Kennedy administration's Presidential Commission
on the Status of Women. By her death, she was
regarded as “one of the most esteemed women in the
world” and “the object of almost universal
respect.” In 1999, she was ranked in the top ten
of Gallup’s List of Most Widely Admired People of
the 20th Century.
Eleanor became an important connection for
Franklin’s administration to the African-American
population during the segregation era. During
Franklin’s terms as President, despite his need to
placate Southern sentiment, Eleanor was vocal in
her support of the African-American civil rights
movement. She concluded that New Deal
programs were discriminating against AfricanAmericans, who received a disproportionately
small share of relief moneys. Eleanor became one
of the only voices in the Roosevelt White House
insisting that benefits be equally extended to
Americans of all races.
Eleanor also broke with precedent by inviting hundreds of
African American guests to the White House. When the
black singer Marian Anderson was denied the use of
Washington’s Constitution Hall in 1939 by the Daughters
of the American Revolution, Eleanor resigned from the
group in protest and helped arrange another concert on the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Roosevelt later presented
Anderson to the King and Queen of the United Kingdom
after Anderson performed at a White House dinner.
Roosevelt also arranged the appointment of AfricanAmerican educator Mary McLeod Bethune, with whom she
had struck up a friendship, as Director of the Division of
Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration. To
avoid problems with the staff when Bethune would visit
the White House, Eleanor would meet her at the gate,
embrace her, and walk in with her arm-in-arm.
In December 1945, U.S. President Harry S.
Truman appointed Eleanor as a delegate to
the United Nations General Assembly. In April 1946,
she became the first chairperson of the
preliminary United Nations Commission on Human
Rights. Eleanor remained chairperson when the
Commission was established on a permanent basis in
January 1947. She played an instrumental role, along
with René Cassin, John Peters Humphrey and others,
in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR). Roosevelt received thirtyfive honorary degrees, thirteen of which were from
universities outside the US.
Supporting Standard (26)
The student understands how people from various
groups contribute to our national identity.
The Student is expected to:
(D) 4 Identify the political, social, & economic
contributions women such as Dolores Huerta to
American society
Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta (born 1930) is
a labor leader and civil rights activist who cofounded the National Farmworkers Association,
which later became the United Farm
Workers (UFW). Huerta has received numerous
awards for her community service and advocacy for
workers’, immigrants’, and womens’ rights,
including the Eugene V. Debs Foundation
Outstanding American Award, the United States
Presidential Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human
Rights and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As
a role model to many in the Latin community,
Huerta is the subject of many corridos (ballads)
and murals.
Huerta’s community activism began when she was a
student in Stockton High School. Huerta was active in
numerous school clubs and was a majorette and a
dedicated member of the Girl Scouts until the age of
18. Huerta attended college at the University of the
Pacific’s Stockton College (later to become San Joaquin
Delta Community College), where she earned a
provisional teaching credential. After teaching
grammar school, Huerta left her job and began her
lifelong crusade to correct economic injustice: “I
couldn’t tolerate seeing kids come to class hungry and
needing shoes. I thought I could do more by
organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their
hungry children.”
In 1955, Huerta co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community
Service Organization, (CSO) and in 1960 co-founded the Agricultural
Workers Association which set up voter registration drives and pressed
local governments for barrio improvements. In 1962, she co-founded
the National Farm Workers Association with César Chávez, which
would later become the United Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee. In 1966, she negotiated a contract between the UFWOC and
Schenley Wine Company, marking the first time that farm workers were
able to effectively bargain with an agricultural enterprise. Through her
work with the CSO, Huerta met César Chávez, the Executive Director
of the CSO. They both soon realized the need to organize farm workers.
In 1962, after the CSO turned down Chávez’s request, as their president,
to organize farm workers, Chávez and Huerta resigned from the CSO.
With Chávez, she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association
which would later merge with the Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee to become the United Farm Workers Organizing
Committee. Huerta’s organizing skills were essential to the growth of
this budding organization.
In 1965, Huerta directed the UFW’s national boycott during
the Delano grape strike, taking the plight of the farm workers to the
consumers. The boycott resulted in the
entire California table grape industry signing a three-year collective
bargaining agreement with the United Farm Workers in 1970. In
addition to organizing she has been highly politically active,
lobbying in favor of (and against) numerous California and federal
laws. The laws that she supported included the following:
1960 bill to permit people to take the California driver's
examination in Spanish
1962 legislation repealing the Bracero Program
1963 legislation to extend Aid to Families with Dependent
Children to California farmworkers
The 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act
As an advocate for farmworkers’ rights, Huerta has been arrested
twenty-two times for participating in non-violent civil
disobedience activities and strikes. She remains active in
progressive causes, and serves on the boards of People for the
American Way, Consumer Federation of California, and Feminist
Majority Foundation. Huerta was named one of the three most
important women of the year by Ms. Magazine in 1997. She was
an inaugural recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human
Rights from President Bill Clinton in 1998. That same
year, Ladies’ Home Journal recognized her as one of the 100 Most
Important Women of the 20th Century, along with such women
leaders as Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, Rosa Parks,
and Indira Gandhi. Huerta received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom from President Barack Obama on May 29, 2012. She is
an Honorary Chair of Democratic Socialists of America and
currently serves on the Board of Directors of Equality California.
Supporting Standard (26)
The student understands how people from various
groups contribute to our national identity.
The Student is expected to:
(D) 5 Identify the political, social, & economic
contributions women such as Sonia Sotomayor
to American society
Sonia Maria
Sotomayor (born
1954) is an Associate
Justice of
the Supreme Court
of the United States,
serving since
August 2009.
Sotomayor is the
Court’s 111th justice,
its first
Hispanic justice,
and its third female
justice.
Sotomayor was born in The Bronx, New York City and
is of Puerto Rican descent. Her father died when she
was nine, and she was subsequently raised by her
mother. Sotomayor graduated summa cum
laude from Princeton University in 1976 and received
her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was
an editor at the Yale Law Journal. She was an advocate
for the hiring of Latino faculty at both schools. She
worked as an assistant district attorney in New York
for four and a half years before entering private
practice in 1984. She played an active role on the
boards of directors for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense
and Education Fund, the State of New York Mortgage
Agency, and the New York City Campaign Finance
Board.
She was too intimidated to ask questions for her first year
there; her writing and vocabulary skills were weak, and she
lacked knowledge in the classics. She put in long hours in
the library and over summers, worked with a professor
outside class, and gained skills, knowledge, and
confidence. She became a moderate student activist and
co-chair of the Acción Puertorriqueña organization, which
looked for more opportunities for Puerto Rican students
and served as a social and political hub for them. In the fall
of 1976, Sotomayor entered Yale Law School, again on a
scholarship. This, too, was a place with very few Latinos.
She fit in well and was known as a hard worker, but she was
not considered among the top stars of her class. In 1979,
she was awarded a J.D. from Yale Law School. She was
admitted to the New York Bar in 1980.
Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court
for the Southern District of New York by
President George H. W. Bush in 1991, and her
nomination was confirmed in 1992. In 1997, she was
nominated by President Bill Clinton to the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Her
nomination was slowed by the Republican majority
in the United States Senate, but she was eventually
confirmed in 1998. On the Second Circuit,
Sotomayor heard appeals in more than 3,000 cases
and wrote about 380 opinions. Sotomayor has
taught at the New York University School of
Law and Columbia Law School.
In May 2009, President Barack Obama nominated
Sotomayor to the Supreme Court to replace retired
Justice David Souter. Her nomination was
confirmed by the Senate in August 2009 by a vote of
68–31. On the court, Sotomayor has been a reliable
member of the liberal bloc when the justices divide
along the commonly perceived ideological lines.
When Sotomayor entered Princeton University on a
full scholarship, there were few women students
and fewer Latinos (about 20). She knew only of the
Bronx and Puerto Rico, and she later described her
initial Princeton experience as like “a visitor
landing in an alien country.”
Nomination and
Confirmation
Sotomayor had wanted to become a judge since she
was in elementary school, and in 1991 she was
recommended for a spot by Democratic New York
senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan
identified with her socio-economic and academic
background and became convinced she would
become the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
Sotomayor was thus nominated on November 27,
1991, by President George H. W. Bush to a seat on
the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York.
Judgeship
As a trial judge, she garnered a reputation for
being well-prepared in advance of a case and
moving cases along a tight schedule. Lawyers
before her court viewed her as plain-spoken,
intelligent, demanding, and sometimes somewhat
unforgiving; one said, “She does not have much
patience for people trying to snow her. You can't
do it.” On June 25, 1997, Sotomayor was
nominated by President Bill Clinton to a seat on
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
which was vacated by J. Daniel Mahoney.
Supreme Court justice
President Obama commissioned Sotomayor
on the day of her confirmation; Sotomayor
was sworn in on August 8, 2009, by Chief
Justice John Roberts. Sotomayor is the
first Hispanic to serve on the Supreme
Court. Sotomayor is also the third woman to
serve on the Court, following Sandra Day
O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her
appointment gives the Court a record
six Roman Catholic justices serving at the
same time.
Supporting Standard (26)
The student understands how people from various
groups contribute to our national identity.
The Student is expected to:
(D) 6 Identify the political, social, & economic
contributions women such as Oprah Winfrey to
American society
Oprah Gail Winfrey (born 1954) is an American media
proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer,
and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her
multi-award-winning talk show The Oprah Winfrey
Show which was the highest-rated program of its kind
in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to
2011. Dubbed the “Queen of All Media,” she has been
ranked the richest African-American of the 20th
century, the greatest black philanthropist in American
history, and is currently North America’s only black
billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments,
the most influential woman in the world. In 2013, she
was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by
President Barack Obama and an honorary doctorate
degree from Harvard.
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a
teenage single mother and later raised in an innercity Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced
considerable hardship during her childhood, saying
she was raped at age nine and became pregnant at 14;
her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she
calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed
a job in radio while still in high school and began coanchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her
emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred
to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a
third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she
launched her own production company and became
internationally syndicated.
Credited with creating a more intimate confessional
form of media communication, she is thought to have
popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk
show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue, which a Yale
study says broke 20th-century taboos and
allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream. By the
mid-1990s, she had reinvented her show with a focus
on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality.
Though criticized for unleashing a confession culture,
promoting controversial self-help ideas, and an
emotion-centered approach she is often praised for
overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to
others. From 2006 to 2008, her support of Barack
Obama, by one estimate, delivered over a million
votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race.
In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV’s
low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago.
The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months
after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in
the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest rated
talk show in Chicago. The movie critic Roger
Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King
World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times
as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies. It
was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a
full hour, and broadcast nationally beginning September
8, 1986. Winfrey’s syndicated show brought in double
Donahue’s national audience, displacing Donahue as the
number-one daytime talk show in America. Their much
publicized contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny.
In the early years of The Oprah Winfrey Show,
the program was classified as a tabloid talk show.
In the mid-1990s, Winfrey adopted a less tabloidoriented format, hosting shows on broader topics
such as heart disease, geopolitics, spirituality and
meditation, interviewing celebrities on social
issues they were directly involved with, such as
cancer, charity work, or substance abuse, and
hosting televised giveaways including shows
where every audience member received a new car
(donated by General Motors) or a trip to Australia
(donated by Australian tourism bodies).
Personal wealth
Born in rural poverty, then raised by a mother on welfare in a poor urban
neighborhood, Winfrey became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show
went national. Winfrey was in a position to negotiate ownership of the
show and start her own production company because of the success and
the amount of revenue the show generated. At age 41, Winfrey had a net
worth of $340 million and replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American
on the Forbes 400. With a 2000 net worth of $800 million, Winfrey is
believed to be the richest African American of the 20th century. Owing to
her status as a historical figure, Professor Juliet E.K. Walker of
the University of Illinois created the course “History 298: Oprah Winfrey,
the Tycoon.” Winfrey was the highest paid TV entertainer in the United
States in 2006, earning an estimated $260 million during the year, five times
the sum earned by second-place music executive Simon Cowell. By 2008,
her yearly income had increased to $275 million. Forbes’ international rich
list has listed Winfrey as the world’s only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006
and as the first black woman billionaire in world history. As of 2014 Winfrey
has a net worth in excess of 2.9 billion dollars and has overtaken
former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as the richest self-made woman in
America.
"The Oprah Effect"
The power of Winfrey’s opinions and endorsement to influence
public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices, has
been dubbed “The Oprah Effect.” The effect has been
documented or alleged in domains as diverse as book sales,
beef markets, and election voting. Late in 1996, Winfrey
introduced the Oprah’s Book Club segment to her television
show. The segment focused on new books and classics and
often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book
club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey
introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly
became a best-seller; for example, when she selected the
classic John Steinbeck novel East of Eden, it soared to the top
of the book charts. Being recognized by Winfrey often means a
million additional book sales for an author.
Philanthropy
In 2004, Winfrey became the first black person to rank among
the 50 most generous Americans and she remained among the
top 50 until 2010. By 2012 she had given away about $400 million
to educational causes. As of 2012, Winfrey had also given over
400 scholarships to Morehouse College in Atlanta,
Georgia. Winfrey was the recipient of the first Bob Hope
Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards for services to
television and film. To celebrate two decades on national TV,
and to thank her employees for their hard work, Winfrey took
her staff and their families (1065 people in total) on vacation to
Hawaii in the summer of 2006. In 2013, Winfrey donated $12
million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African
American History and Culture. President Barack
Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom later
that same year.
Oprah's Angel Network
In 1998, Winfrey created the Oprah’s Angel Network, a
charity that supported charitable projects and provided
grants to nonprofit organizations around the world. Oprah's
Angel Network raised more than $80,000,000 ($1 million of
which was donated by Jon Bon Jovi). Winfrey personally
covered all administrative costs associated with the charity, so
100% of all funds raised went to charity programs. The
charity stopped accepting donations in May 2010 and was
later dissolved. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Oprah
created the Oprah Angel Network Katrina registry which
raised more than $11 million for relief efforts. Winfrey
personally gave $10 million to the cause. Homes were built in
Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama before the one-year
anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
South Africa
In 2004, Winfrey and her team filmed an episode of her
show, Oprah’s Christmas Kindness , in which Winfrey travelled to
South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children
affected by poverty and AIDS. During the 21-day trip, Winfrey and
her crew visited schools and orphanages in poverty-stricken areas,
and distributed Christmas presents to 50,000 children, with dolls for
the girls and soccer balls for the boys, and school supplies.
Throughout the show, Winfrey appealed to viewers to donate money
to Oprah’s Angel Network for poor and AIDS-affected children in
Africa. From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over
$7,000,000. Winfrey invested $40 million and some of her time
establishing the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for
Girls in Henley on Klip south of Johannesburg, South Africa. The
school set over 22 acres, opened in January 2007 with an enrollment
of 150 pupils (increasing to 450) and features state-of-the-art
classrooms, computer and science laboratories, a library, theatre and
beauty salon.
Fini