Kosciusko: A Polish General and Oprah Winfrey

This small central Mississippi county seat carries the name of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish military engineer who designed the fortifications at West Point and helped the Continental Army win the American Revolution. When the settlement was incorporated in eighteen thirty-six, citizens chose his name to honor a hero of liberty, though they dropped the silent Z. The town has a second, more recent claim to fame: on January twenty-ninth, nineteen fifty-four, Oprah Gail Winfrey was born here.

She spent her earliest years with her grandmother in Kosciusko, learning to read by age three and first performing in front of a congregation at a local church, before moving to Milwaukee at age six. A road outside town is now named in her honor.