Oprah Winfrey donates $2 million in food relief to Nashville households

Dave Paulson
Nashville Tennessean

It’s been more than 40 years since Oprah Winfrey moved away from Nashville and began to build an empire. But she still thinks of Music City as home – and a community she’s compelled to help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The media mogul revealed she made a $2 million donation providing food relief to 10,000 households in the Nashville area.

The donation is part of Winfrey’s $12 million COVID-19 Relief Fund, which also benefits underserved communities in her “home cities” of Chicago, Milwaukee and Kosciusko, Mississippi, among others.

'The real need is feeding people'

To determine needs in Nashville, Winfrey held a conference call with a group of pastors from 10 area churches, including Bishop Joseph Warren Walker III of Mount Zion Baptist Church.

Oprah Winfrey kicking off "Oprah's 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus Tour" in Florida Jan. 4.

"I wanted to go directly to the people," Winfrey said on a Zoom call with reporters on Tuesday.

"...The bishops said from the beginning, 'The real need is feeding people.'"

The result was NashvilleNurtures, a nonprofit partnership between Mt. Zion and Tennessee State University, Winfrey's alma mater. 

Through the NashvilleNurtures website, 10,000 households applied for and received a $200 Kroger gift card. 

Bishop Walker said he and TSU President Glenda Glover consulted local business, civic and religious leaders with knowledge of those who'd been adversely impacted by the pandemic.

Sixty-eight percent of applicants reported they were single heads of households, and 63 percent said they had lost a job or had their salary reduced. 

"We didn't understand the depth of the need," Bishop Walker said. "We had a sense of it, but in terms of the human stories and the gratitude that came from that, this was the thing that really gave them hope, and really inspired other people in the community to come alongside and do what we have done."

Winfrey tied the donation to what she'd learned on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and its famed "Favorite Things" giveaway episodes: "The gift was one thing, but the fact that you could get the gift was even bigger.

"The $200 fills that need, but the fact that it happened to you gives you a sense of hope — that something good can also happen again to you. It's instilling the hope, and letting people know that (they) were thought of. That's what I was trying to do in this moment. And often I believe in the adage that you spend your money, and your charitable, philanthropy work is to raise people up and to teach them how to fish for themselves. But during this pandemic, what I recognize is sometimes people just need a piece of fish."

That elicited smiles from Bishop Walker and Glover, who were also on Tuesday's Zoom call. Though they offered no shortage of praise and gratitude towards Winfrey, she continued to defer to them as leaders of the community she came of age in. 

Winfrey spent teen years in Nashville 

Winfrey moved to Nashville when she was 14 years old. She lived with her father, Vernon Winfrey, and attended East Nashville High School and TSU. 

While still in high school, she began her broadcasting career at radio station WVOL, which led to a TV anchor position at WLAC (now WTVF). She left Nashville for another anchor gig in Baltimore in 1976.

Aug. 8, 1975-Nashville Mayor-Elect Richard Fulton, left, get interview by Oprah Winfrey after he arrives with his wife for the premiere showing of the movie "Nashville" at the Martin 100 Oaks Theater.

But before all that, her very first job — unpaid, she notes — also dealt with providing food to the Nashville community. After school, she'd work behind the counter at an East Nashville market co-owned by her father.

"My father used to have that jar at the front of the store where you'd sell cookies for a penny," she told The Tennessean. 

"And it made no sense to me that you've got to sell a hundred cookies — a hundred damn cookies — to make a dollar! You could be here all day, and you only made a dollar! I have to say, not long ago, I was saying to my dad, 'You got me working all that time, and you never paid me anything. I wasn't getting paid!' And he goes, 'You made up for it.'"

Winfrey established her Oprah Winfrey's Charitable Foundation in 1993. Its efforts have included the construction of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, $25 million in scholarships to Morehouse College through the Oprah Winfrey Scholars Program and a recent $1 million donation to the United Negro College Fund.

Winfrey told reporters the pandemic has showed "how we are all connected, and how we are one." But she also said it "deeply frightens" her that some people haven't come to that conclusion during this time. 

"We all had a time out, got sent to our rooms with enough reflected time to look at the bigger picture of what this moment means. And I think a lot of people went to their rooms, and they were playing. And they didn't get it. What really frightens me is you're gonna have to get another lesson, and another time out before you can see it. That it's gonna have to hit your family, your neighbors, your community, before you can see it. I don't spend a lot of energy worried about, 'How do I get other people to do...' I just focus on, 'OK, what can I do?' I think the message for this story for me is (telling) other people, 'OK, this is what I could do, this is my tithe for right now. What is yours?'"