Oprah_ A Biography Part 4

The judges asked the contestants what they wanted to do with their lives. Oprah said, "I believe in truth and I want to perpetuate truth. So I want to be a journalist like Barbara Walters."

Next they asked what the contestants would do if given a million dollars. Most said they would give it to charity, help the poor, or buy their parents a new house. Not Oprah.

"Lord, you just watch me," she said, lifting her eyes to Heaven. "If I had a million dollars, I would be a spendin' fool. I'm not quite sure what I would spend it on, but I would spend, spend, spend. Just be a spendin' fool."

"Everybody laughed," said Nancy Solinski, "and I was pleased, although frankly surprised, that she won. I put the crown on her head, so grateful that the judges had gotten over their own prejudices. It was time."

John Heidelberg had accompanied Oprah to the event. "The crowd was just overwhelmed with her, and you could see that she was just loving every minute of it." He remembered how thrilled she was to have newspaper photographers rus.h.i.+ng to take her picture. " 'Here I am,' she'd yell. Oprah loved the camera. 'Where's the camera? Here I am. Come see me.' She loved the limelight." He laughed as he recalled her reactions.

"[She thought,] 'This is great. Hey, I love this! This is going places!' "

A few weeks after riding atop a parade float as Miss Fire Prevention, Oprah walked with the cla.s.s of 1971 to receive her diploma and graduate. Fifteen years later, East Nashville High School graduated its last cla.s.s and became East Literature Magnet School. Even with the school doors closed, many from the cla.s.s wanted to stay connected, but Oprah never looked back.

"Not even to contribute a brick," said Larry Carpenter at the East Alumni House

as he walked up the path paved with legacy bricks carrying the names of former students and the years in which they graduated. The bricks, which cost fifty dollars, finance scholars.h.i.+ps for poor children in Nashville. As of 2008, there was no brick in the name of the school's most famous graduate. "I have written to Oprah many times in hopes that she might want to contribute to our scholars.h.i.+p fund, but I've never received a reply."

The president of the East Nashville High Alumni a.s.sociation, Patsy Rainey Cline, also tried to solicit Oprah's support for the school's scholars.h.i.+p program, but to no avail. "She has not shown any interest in any activity of the school since she left Nashville....She seems so interested in underprivileged children and different nationalities of black children, and that situation certainly is prevalent at East High, but..."

Considering the millions of dollars Oprah would later give to charity, Larry Carpenter and Patsy Rainey Cline cannot be faulted for thinking her exclusion of East High is deliberate. Luvenia Harrison Butler felt Oprah ignored her high school in Nashville because of painful memories. "It's all part of her secretive past," she said.

Yet when the cla.s.s of '71 decided to have a reunion in 1994, they again contacted Oprah, and this time she responded by saying that she'd like to have the reunion on her television show. "We spent weeks getting all the names and addresses of everyone for her producers," Luvenia said. "It was a lot of work, but we thought it was a great way to bring everyone together. Unfortunately, it didn't quite happen that way."

The promised reunion for the cla.s.s resulted in a show more focused on the host than on her cla.s.smates. Oprah invited only a few to appear, plus her favorite teacher, Andrea Haynes. "I felt taken advantage of--used, really--when I got to Chicago and realized that the show wasn't going to be the reunion that was promised," recalled Gary Holt.

When Oprah introduced the former student body president as a computer science teacher, she said, "I thought you'd be president of a company or something." When he related his story about getting "the wooden paddle" his senior year for having left the grounds during school hours, she was astounded. "How could you be paddled? You were the student body president."

"Rules are rules, Oprah," he said. "For everyone."

Before taping the show he had seen her in the hall surrounded by her coterie of hairstylists, makeup men, and producers. "I gave her a big hug and said, 'Hon, why are you doing all of this?' She said, 'Because I want to bring the truth to the world.' " He handed her his 1971 yearbook, which she had first signed when they were seniors. Next to that entry, which said, in part, "I want you to know that in a very special way--I love you," she now wrote: "Gary--22 years later G.o.d is still King! Thank you for what you've done and continue to do to live well! Oprah." He didn't know what she meant. "Possibly, it's just a safe statement that she or her staff has coined for the general public."

During one segment of that show, Oprah introduced a man who had written a book about the difficulty of fulfilling high-school achievements. He said, "To be a highschool hero is the biggest thing in life. It's hard to equal that kind of esteem later on."

Aside from a cardiac surgeon, Andre Churchwell, who graduated from East in 1971, Oprah seemed to be the only one sitting onstage who had exceeded the promise of high-school potential. At the end of the show, she asked her cla.s.smates how they looked back on their high-school years. Each responded with warmth and sentiment, saying those years were a valuable proving ground, and a time when they felt they had been a family.

Oprah looked amused. Standing in her own spotlight, finally thin and glamorous at the age of forty, she was anything but nostalgic. "Boy, I didn't feel it was a family," she said. "I felt like it was just a phase. I moved on."

Four.

I LOVED THE girl that Oprah was back then," said Luvenia Harrison Butler.

"She was Ope or Opie, and I was Luv or Veenie....We met in high school and were close until she left town. We used to crack each other up doing Geraldine." Luvenia laughed as she recalled the comedian Flip Wilson's cross-dressing impersonation of a sa.s.sy female he called Geraldine. Each week on his variety show he sashayed across the stage in a tight Pucci dress, high heels, and a long black wig as a babe bra.s.sy enough to scare a bear. From 1970 to 1974, Geraldine was adored by television audiences, black and white.

"Oprah and I imitated Geraldine all the time," Luvenia said as she paged through her 1971 high-school yearbook thirty-seven years after graduation. She smiled at what Oprah had written: Hey, Luv--You are one of the nicest nuts I've ever known. Your friends.h.i.+p means and has meant so much to me. I'll always remember..."A pea's a pea, a bean's a bean, who you think you playin' with--Geraldine!" You'll go a long way and be ultra successful.

Good luck! Remember me.

Over lunch in 2008, Luvenia shook her head with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Remember her?

Lord in Heaven, who can forget her? She's announcing herself to the world every time you turn around."

The effects of the Sears Roebuck Charm School that Oprah attended in Milwaukee show in her yearbook pictures. Sitting with the honor society, she is the only girl who crossed her arms in an X X on her lap, the perfect way to deflect camera focus on her lap, the perfect way to deflect camera focus from the stomach. Standing with the student body president, she tilted her head up, another charm-school trick to elongate a double chin. With the National Forensic League, she stood in the cla.s.sic model pose, one foot in front of the other.

"Look at her head shot," said Luvenia, pointing to the picture of Oprah in dangly earrings with peace symbols. "See how dark she is there? Big wide nose and all. Now [over three decades later] she's different. She looks like she has bleached her skin and maybe had some kind of surgery....The real Oprah is Sofia in The Color Purple. The Color Purple. That's That's the real Oprah. Not the Photoshopped glamazon on the covers of her magazine who looks so light-skinned."

As an African American, Luvenia understands the tyranny of color among blacks.

"Because Oprah is so dark she felt discrimination within our own community....That's why she's always been attracted to high yella men. She needs to have a successful lightskinned man by her side to feel secure. In Nashville, it was Bill 'Bubba' Taylor, the mortician. When she left here she set her cap for Ed Bradley, the light-skinned correspondent for 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes. She got sidetracked in Baltimore by some light-skinned She got sidetracked in Baltimore by some light-skinned disc jockey. Then Stedman. Obama. Even Gayle. They're all high yella."

Oprah's fixation with light skin is borne out by a famous psychological experiment cited in Brown v. Board of Education Brown v. Board of Education in which black children offered dolls of in which black children offered dolls of differing skin tones overwhelmingly chose to play with the white dolls. When asked to identify the "nice" doll, they chose the white one; when asked to select the "bad" doll, they pointed to the black one. "We interpreted it to mean that the Negro child accepts as early as six, seven, or eight the negative stereotypes about his own group," testified Kenneth Clark, one of the psychologists conducting the experiment.

Oprah admitted that color discrimination dominated her life for many years, even dictating the college she selected. She said she enrolled at Tennessee State University, a historically black college in Nashville, rather than the private, more prestigious Fisk University because she didn't want to compete with light-skinned girls. In those days Fisk was known for "the paper bag test." Supposedly, applicants were required to attach photographs to their admission forms, and anyone darker than a brown paper bag was rejected.

"Oprah did not really want to go to college," said her high-school speech teacher, Andrea Haynes. "She had a paying job at the black radio station and was setting her sights on television, but Vernon insisted she get a college education. So she kept her radio job and enrolled at TSU, which, in my opinion, was really the lesser educational inst.i.tution in Nashville." But TSU, which charged $318 a year for tuition compared to $1,750 a year at Fisk, was all Vernon Winfrey could afford. People have since written that Oprah won a scholars.h.i.+p to study speech and drama at TSU, but the school offered no records of such a scholars.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.s.

This distinction was not lost on Oprah, who told Interview Interview magazine, "I went to [TSU 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 People magazine that she "hated, hated, hated" her college. "Now 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 'n.i.g.g.e.r' 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, 60 Minutes, she was "not a she was "not a das.h.i.+ki-wearing kind of woman."

When she realized that the ruling cla.s.s in America hailed from the Ivy League she was even more embarra.s.sed 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 cla.s.smates, 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 cla.s.s 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 hara.s.sed. 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 cla.s.smate. "We took a speech and communication cla.s.s together as freshmen. Speech was her major; mine was education, but the cla.s.s was a required course for both of us. There were fifteen in the cla.s.s, 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. She mentored me in that cla.s.s. We were peers, but she decided that I was her student, probably because I was the opposite of her.

I'm not verbally aggressive or a.s.sertive. She would follow me around. 'I'm behind you,'

she'd yell in the hall or on the stairs. 'I'm following you.' She was determined to be my friend. I was considered a pretty girl back then, and that's why she wanted to befriend me.

She knew I had been recruited by American Airlines, which was a big deal at that time.

They were going to use me in their advertising commercials. So Oprah figured, 'I'm going to get close to her.' It was a 'pretty girl' thing. Nothing to do with any accomplishment or my personality. Just how I looked."

For all her rampaging self-confidence, Oprah later admitted that her self-image was frayed around the edges. "I remember that every single month, on the day Seventeen Seventeen magazine came out, I'd wait by the newsstand for the delivery truck. They'd throw a stack of magazines off, and I'd be there to buy the first copy and read all the beauty tips. I mean, my G.o.d, the idea of being a pretty girl! I thought if I could just be pretty, my life would be fine. So I'd look at the models and at every makeup trick there was and I'd try them all. I even ironed my hair. Here I was, a negro girl who had no business ironing anything but her s.h.i.+rt, and I was ironing my hair."

Years later Oprah admitted to the actress Charlize Theron that she grew up "idolizing beautiful girls." She said, "I'd think, 'What would it be like to look like that?' "

When she met Diane Sawyer she seemed besotted by the beautiful blond cohost of Good Good Morning America, who, like Oprah, was a Southern beauty queen, crowned America's who, like Oprah, was a Southern beauty queen, crowned America's Junior Miss in 1963.

Some employees at ABC-TV noticed the affectionate relations.h.i.+p between the two women, and winked as if to say, "Guess who's got a crush on Diane?" They recalled the giggly late-night phone calls, their excited plans for future joint programs, the hugs, and Oprah's lavish gifts--the gigantic sprays of orchids that arrived after every one of Diane's big exclusives, the expensive Kieselstein-Cord handbag, the one-carat diamond toe ring.

"There was a whisper in the workplace," said Bonnie Goldstein, a former producer for ABC News. ABC News.

"I don't even know how [our friends.h.i.+p] happened," Oprah told InStyle InStyle magazine magazine in 1998. "We used to sit around the table and say, 'You know who is the coolest person?

That Diane Sawyer.' Then out of the clear darn blue sky Diane called and invited me to Martha's Vineyard. We had so much fun. Fun, fun, fun."

Another beautiful woman Oprah befriended after she became famous was Julia Roberts, the star of Pretty Woman, Pretty Woman, who appeared on her talk show ten times and who appeared on her talk show ten times and described Oprah in 2004 as her "best friend." Intrigued by the actress's luscious good looks, Oprah asked, "Does the pretty thing ever get to ya?...I'm wondering. I was having this discussion with my girlfriend the other day. I said, 'It's a really great thing we were never, like, pretty women, because now we don't have to worry about losing that.' " The actress said: "You can't really complain about being in a movie called Pretty Woman Pretty Woman when you're the woman." Oprah nodded in agreement and smiled adoringly.

In college she seemed to collect pretty people. "She had her eye on my boyfriend at Fisk and was always asking me questions about him," said Sheryl Atkinson. "He looked a lot like Stedman--what we call a pretty boy, high yella--light-skinned with European features and a caramel complexion....Oprah was quite aggressive in her pursuit of him. I remember lying on my bed in the dorm one Sunday night listening to her on WVOL. I heard her dedicate a song to him. I couldn't believe it. I wasn't mad, because I knew he wasn't interested in her, but I was amazed at how forward she was. But she was like that in cla.s.s, too. The professors didn't like her because she would debate with them and tell them they were wrong. They might say something and Oprah would come back and rebuke them. She would take over the cla.s.s. Very bossy."

Not all TSU professors felt that way. Dr. W. D. c.o.x remembered Oprah as an outstanding student. "I knew her from age sixteen to about twenty-one. I taught her in stage lighting, scenery, and the history of the theater. She was a very likeable student, carried a full load, and took responsibility seriously." He recalled taking his cla.s.s to Chicago in 1972 for a speech project and "enjoy[ing] a little foolishness" at Oprah's expense.

"During our stay [in the city] a girl was reported raped on the second floor. I told a lie on Oprah. If Oprah had known about the rape, she'd have shouted, 'Yoo-hoo. I'm up here!' Oprah didn't take too kindly to that joke. She was quite provoked."

Dr. c.o.x regretted making fun of Oprah's aggressiveness when he learned of her history of s.e.xual molestation. "I was astonished," he said. "Her father and stepmother were the strength behind her. [Vernon's] att.i.tude was strict, and he was the best thing that ever happened to her."

In her soph.o.m.ore year Oprah joined the Tennessee State Players Guild to play the role of Coretta Scott King in a drama t.i.tled The Tragedy of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Tragedy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Headlining the review in The Meter, The Meter, the TSU newspaper was brutal: "Martin Luther King the TSU newspaper was brutal: "Martin Luther King Murdered Twice." The drama critic was unsparing: Oprah Winfrey, playing Coretta King, somewhat disappointed me. Oprah, newscaster for a local radio station, shows versatility in her radio broadcasts on WVOL.

She however failed to do this on stage and fluctuated very little during the play.

Years later Oprah attributed her unpopularity in college to envy. "My cla.s.smates were so jealous of me because I had a paying job. I remember taking my little $115 paycheck, and at the time I was trying to appease them. Anytime anybody needed any money I was always offering, 'Oh, you need ten dollars?' or taking them out for pizza, ordering pizza for the cla.s.s, things like that. That whole 'disease to please.' That's where it was the worst for me, I think, because I had wanted to be accepted by them and could not be."

Her cla.s.smates did not recognize her behavior as insecurity. "She acted as if she knew she was going to be someone and stick it to all of us later on," said Sheryl Atkinson. "She walked down the hallway with her head up in the air and swis.h.i.+ng from side to side as if to say, 'I'm the best thing walkin'.' When people saw her coming, they avoided her. She had the kind of confidence that said, 'I don't care that you don't like me-I'm going to be someone big and you'll be sorry.' She did become someone very big, but I'm not sorry. I applaud her, and I commend her on the good works she's done. I just wish she weren't so bitter about our school. But that springs from stuff deep inside Oprah, from secrets that are too dark and deep to look at....People struggle with that kind of stuff their entire lives....Maybe her dark stuff was connected to her father's strictness. I know she disliked him intensely when we were in school."

Later in life Oprah publicly thanked Vernon for saving her. "Without his direction, I'd have wound up pregnant and another statistic." But that grat.i.tude was a long time coming. When she turned eighteen, she broke away from his strict control and moved out of his house.

"I had to help her, because Vernon was so p.i.s.sed off he wouldn't lift a finger,"

said Luvenia Harrison Butler. "We moved her into an apartment on Cane Ridge Road in Hickory Hollow." In later years, Oprah maintained that she continued living under her father's roof and the whip of his midnight curfews until she left Nashville at the age of twenty-two. "I don't know why she'd say something like that--maybe to put forward the image of a good little girl....Whatever the reason, it's probably connected to those d.a.m.n secrets of hers....That's why she makes everyone who works for her sign those confidentiality agreements that forbid them from ever breathing a word about their personal or professional experiences with her. I guess it's her way of keeping control over what people find out about her....It's kind of sad."

Soon after Oprah moved into her own apartment she called upon Gordon El Greco Brown, a local promoter who had purchased the franchise for Miss Black Nashville and Miss Black Tennessee in 1972. "Her stepmother, Miss Zelma, had first brought her to meet me for Miss Fire Prevention....When she started at TSU she enrolled in my modeling school near campus. She waltzed in one day and announced, 'Hi. I'm going to be a big star someday. Where do I sign up, baby?' She was only 17 and not beautiful. But I could tell she had something. She was very poised and had a great speaking voice."

The deep timbre of Oprah's voice never failed to impress. In high school her rich vocal range was compared to that of the American contralto Marian Anderson. For a teenager, Oprah's commanding voice was always a revelation.

"Miss Black Nashville was the first time there had ever been a beauty pageant for black girls. In the past it was white girls only," said El Greco Brown. "Oprah [saw] that contest as a stepping stone for the big career she so desperately wanted....I had to practically beg everyone else to partic.i.p.ate because there was no cash incentive. No scholars.h.i.+p. No record deal. No Hollywood contract. Just a t.i.tle, a sash and a bouquet."

Oprah filled out the pageant application, stating her height: 5'61/2''; weight: 135 lbs.; measurements: 36-25-37; shoe size: 8-81/2. She listed her hobbies: swimming and people; her talent: dramatic interpretation; and her parents: Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Winfrey, with no mention of her mother, Vernita Lee, in Milwaukee. For "Why are you entering the Miss Black America beauty pageant?" she wrote, "I would like to try to instill a sense of individual (black) pride within our people. Self-dignity." She stated that she had "never been married, annulled, divorced or separated," and had "never conceived a child."

The night of March 10, 1972, there was not an empty seat at the Black Elks lodge on Jefferson Street. "I had managed to get fifteen contestants, and they were judged on beauty in evening gown and swimsuit compet.i.tions, plus talent," said El Greco Brown.

"Oprah gave an average showing in the [beauty] compet.i.tions but when her talent turn came she did a dramatic reading and sang--and she knocked the audience off their feet.

She was so good; it moved her into the top five.

"There was only one girl who out-excelled Oprah in talent. Her name was Maude Mobley and she later worked as a backup singer at the Grand Ole Opry. Not only was Maude talented, she had a beautiful figure and scored top marks in the swimsuit and evening gown compet.i.tions. Everyone picked her as the winner as soon as her foot hit the stage."

The six judges tabulated their scores and the winners were announced from last to first: "I couldn't believe it when [the MC] read out the name of the fourth runner-up: Maude Mobley. He continued to read the winners, pausing briefly before he called out: 'The winner, and the first Miss Black Nashville, is Oprah Gail Winfrey.' "

Recalling a collective gasp of shock from the audience, the promoter said he was besieged by people who claimed the contest had been fixed. "I was confused myself. So I gathered up all the judges' scorecards and tallied up the votes. I couldn't believe what I discovered: the number four runner-up and the winner's scores had been switched. I'm convinced the scoring switch was an error. The judges were honest men and women."

The promoter said he went to the Winfreys' house the next day to explain the mixup. "I asked Oprah if she would consider giving the crown to...the rightful winner. Oprah stood up and said angrily, 'No, it's mine! My name was called and I am Miss Black Nashville.'

"I tried to reason with her. 'How would you feel if you had been in Maude's shoes?'

" 'I don't care,' she said."

The next week Oprah's picture appeared in the Nashville newspapers as the winner. Her photograph, with a press release mentioning Patrice Patton as the first runner-up, was sent to black newspapers across the country. There was no mention of Maude Mobley.

"Everyone at TSU talked about the Miss Black Nashville contest," said Sheryl Atkinson. "We discussed it among ourselves, because Oprah seemed least likely to win.

She certainly wasn't the prettiest, but I'm sure she was the most vocal."

"I think she got it because she was well known from her radio show," said Barbara Wright. "She couldn't have gotten it any other way."

The confusion over tabulating the scores did not become public until Oprah became famous. Then Gordon El Greco Brown wanted to publish a book of photographs.

"I had hundreds of pictures of Oprah from those pageants and wrote her to say that I'd like to publish something. Her lawyer Jeff Jacobs wrote me back and said they'd like to see all the pictures. When I saw that he was a lawyer, I said I'd come to Chicago with my lawyer so we could make a deal. But Jacobs said no, I couldn't bring a lawyer. I had to meet with him and Oprah alone. They flew me to Chicago, put me up in a hotel, and sent a limousine to bring me to the Harpo studios. Oprah met me, hugged me, and was my best friend. Then she handed me off to her lawyer, who really roughed me up.

" 'We just want to see what you've got,' said Jacobs. So I showed him all my pictures. I said I had spent three years promoting Oprah [for free] and would now like to do a book.

"Jacobs said, 'No book. No job. No nothing. We'll put some money on the table and the pictures stay with us. Take it or leave it.' I said I wanted to keep my pictures.

Jacobs said, 'So leave, but we don't want to see those pictures all over the place.' When I left Harpo, they canceled the limo to the airport, and I had to flag a cab."

Feeling spurned, the promoter sold his story and some of his photos to the National Enquirer, which ran the headline "Oprah Stole Beauty Contest Crown!" Her which ran the headline "Oprah Stole Beauty Contest Crown!" Her publicist denied the story: "Oprah was never told of any alleged problems with any pageants she was in at any time."

Maude Mobley, described in the 1992 story as the "rightful pageant winner,"

sounded fearful. "Oprah's a rich and powerful woman. I would rather not talk about this.

It might anger her."

Maude's mother was not so cautious. "I knew something wasn't right when they called out Oprah as the winner," she said twenty years after the pageant. "After I talked to Maude, I was so angry that I wrote to everybody I could think of to get the situation righted. But no one was interested. It's true that Oprah stole that crown."

Another version of the switched-votes story surfaced when Patrice Patton, the first runner-up for Miss Black Nashville, noticed Gordon El Greco Brown's tabloid story when she was grocery shopping. "I already knew that the scores had been switched, and that Oprah had not won," she said in 2008, "but I don't believe what Gordon is quoted as saying in that story....I don't believe for one minute that Oprah knew about the switch or that Gordon ever confronted her. I was told by the pageant coordinator that Gordon was the one who switched the votes on Miss Black Nashville. The pageant coordinator said she had confronted him at the time, and when he didn't step forward to correct the situation, she quit. I ran into her a few years later and she told me the truth: that I had actually won Miss Black Nashville and Oprah had been the runner-up. I never said anything, because it was five years after the fact and I would've looked like a sore loser.

Besides, I liked Oprah. She was good folks....