Miss Vernita Lee (left) with he daughter Oprah
This week, the world was rocked by the tragic news that Miss Vernita Lee had passed away at the age of 83. Though best known as the mother of Oprah, Miss Lee was a hardworking productive woman in her own right, who added real value working as a domestic, and making people’s homes clean and beautiful.
Born in 1935, Lee grew up poor in rural Kosciusko Mississippi, where she had been raised by her mother Miss Hattie Mae who had only a few years of schooling and her father Mr. Earless Lee who had so little schooling, he could not write his own name.
Lee herself would not complete high school, finding herself an unwed teenage mother to Oprah. Despite this adversity, Lee took charge of her life by packing up and moving to Milwaukee in the 1950s. She was part of the great migration of blacks going North, seeking a better life, and would later send for six-year-old Oprah, who lived with Lee (on and off) until the age of fourteen. She had four children (though two have passed on), one of whom (Oprah) would grow up to be the World’s only black billionaire (from 2004 to 2007) and the World’s most influential woman.
Pumpkin Person 
Do an estimate of Oprah’s mother’s IQ.
Yes, I’ve wondered that myself. On the one hand she’s Oprah’s mom which points to high IQ; on the other hand Arthur Jensen has noted that blacks raised in the rural South are the most disadvantaged people in America with adult IQs of only 70. And even though Jensen eschews environmentalism, he admits that for this unique subculture, environment is so bad that average IQ drops 15 points from childhood to adolescence. Is that because their relative intelligence is actually declining or are they just not acquiring the types of cultural experience rewarded by the test?
Table 1. Additional Scaled-Score Points by Age Awarded to WAIS-III Subtests When the Reference Group Receives a Scaled Score of 10
Age Range
Subtests 16–17 18–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 65–69 70–74 75–79 80–84 85–89
Verbal
Vocabulary 1 0 0 0 −1 −1 −2 −1 −1 −1 −1 1 1
Similarities 0 0 0 0 −1 −1 −1 0 1 1 1 2 3
Arithmetic 0 0 0 0 −1 −1 −1 −1 0 0 0 1 2
Digit Span 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 2 2 3
Information 0 0 0 0 −1 −1 −2 −1 −1 −1 −1 0 0
Comprehension 1 0 0 0 −1 −1 −2 −1 −1 −1 0 1 1
Letter-Number Seq 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 3 4 4 5
Performance
Picture Comp 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 3 4 6
Digit Symbol 0 −1 −1 0 0 0 1 3 4 5 6 7 8
Block Design 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 5 6
Matrix Reason −1 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 3 4 5 5 6
Picture Arrang 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 6
Symbol Search 0 −1 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 5 6 8 9
Object Assembly 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 4 6 6 7
Note. Negative values indicate performance that exceeds the reference group of persons 20 to 34 years.
WAIS-III = Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III.
from this it can be seen those with the smallest “handicap” total are 35-44.
and it can be seen how much less performance at verbal tasks deteriorates.
and it can be seen that age 45 – 54 have the highest VIQ.
and it can be seen that even at age 85-90 the information subtest has no penalty.
Interesting table.
Where is it from?
you need me inside you.