Oprah’s Smithsonian NMAAHC Exhibit Celebrates Her Leadership Role As America’s Conscience

Something amazing will likely happen because this exists…

When Oprah Winfrey was an 18-year old high school student with honors in Nashville, Tennessee in 1972, Shirley Chisholm was a 48-year old woman in New York City running for President of the United States. Thus, it’s entirely appropriate to believe that what the now-opening Watching Oprah: The Oprah Winfrey Show And American Culture exhibit is celebrating — more so than anything else — is the breadth, depth, and spread of the shared American experience of excellent African-American female social leadership in modern America. What Chisholm referred to as a “bloodless revolution” for women’s and civil rights in the United States via her Presidential campaign is now a fully formed vehicle of social change that, with Oprah as its forebear, portends for so many epic future victories. This exhibition celebrates that in full, and as a springboard into a more extensive discussion about where we’re headed as a nation, is an ideal conversation starter.