4.6 • 32.9K Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2021
⏱️ 40 minutes
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0:00.0 | I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of |
0:07.5 | the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present. |
0:16.0 | Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right |
0:23.0 | now. |
0:24.8 | Whenever I hear Paul Simon's song Born at the Right Time, I think he must be singing |
0:29.6 | about me. I came into the world in 1954 in Mississippi, a state with more lynchings than |
0:37.2 | any other in the union, at a time when being a black man walking down the street, minding |
0:43.1 | your business, could make you subject to any white person's accusation or whimsy. A time |
0:49.9 | when having a good job meant working for a nice white family that at least didn't call |
0:56.2 | you a nigga to your face, a time when Jim Crow reigned, segregation prevailed in black |
1:02.9 | teachers themselves, scarcely educated, were forced to use ragged textbooks discarded |
1:09.9 | from white schools. Yet the same year I was born, a season of change began. In 1954, |
1:19.5 | the Supreme Court ruled in Brown versus Board of Education that black people had the right |
1:26.3 | to equal education. The ruling created hope that life could be better for black folks everywhere. |
1:33.9 | I've always believed free will is a birthright, part of the universe's design for us, and |
1:40.6 | I know that every soul yearns to be free. |
1:45.8 | In 1997, while I was preparing to play Setha in the movie Beloved, I arranged to trip |
1:52.6 | along a portion of the Underground Railroad. I wanted to connect with what it felt like |
1:57.9 | to be a slave, wandering through the woods, making my way north to a life beyond slavery. |
2:04.6 | A life where being free at its most basic level meant not having a master telling you |
2:11.6 | what to do, but when I was blindfolded, taken into the woods and left alone to contemplate |
2:18.2 | which direction led to the next safehouse. I understood for the first time that freedom |
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