Oprah Winfrey was the main draw at a fundraiser for Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C., on Friday. She appeared as a part of the $50-million Revitalize Bennett campaign.
Although the main fundraising event was an evening dinner, the most meaningful part of the day was a meeting with Bennett College students in the campus chapel Friday afternoon.
In a 90-minute talk, Oprah related her personal-development philosophy to a packed chapel of approximately 500 students and faculty and staff members. Oprah spoke frankly and with an intensity not typically seen on her television show.
Her message was one of alignment—of purpose and intention. Partially spiritual and partially matter-of-fact, Oprah transfixed the audience with personal lessons tied back to a philosophical backbone of defining your mission in life and aligning that with your personality.
Oprah also spent roughly one-third of her time discussing hip-hop music and her opinion of the debilitating effect of misogynistic and racist lyrics. She riveted the audience with historical anecdotes of slavery, Jim Crow and the civil-rights era and pointed out that the last word a lynched person heard was the N-word. She pointedly criticized blacks for taking hate speech, "setting it to a beat and dancing to it."
She described her mainly unsatisfactory talks with hip-hop artists and her understanding that as a 52-year-old woman, she could be seen as "out of touch." But she wasn't out of touch when she told the audience that their generation "didn't know who they were."
Oprah reminded the students of Bennett that they were there because their ancestors fought and paid for their freedom with blood. She told them their existence was caused by extreme sacrifices made by known people, like Sojourner Truth, and many others whose identity is lost to history. Oprah told the audience that when a black woman comes into the room, she comes with the presence of one, but the strength of 10,000.
After her talk, she took questions from the audience. The students were very engaged and the questions reflected the serious and enlightening tone of the afternoon.
That evening, Oprah again took to the stage after an extremely insightful introduction by Dr. Johnnetta Cole, president of Bennett College for Women. There was also a surprise performance by gospel star Shirley Caesar and a warm and at-times funny talk by Dr. Maya Angelou, who noted that everywhere she travels in the world people come up to her and in their own languages ask, "How is Oprah?"
There were more than 800 people attending the black-tie evening event. There were three gold corporate sponsors, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, No. 6 on The 2006 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list.
Luke Visconti, partner and cofounder of DiversityInc, is on the board of trustees of Bennett College for Women.
