BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa — A central South African university known for fraught race relations is welcoming a visit by Oprah Winfrey as an acknowledgment of the progress it has made toward tolerance.

On Friday, Winfrey received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Free State, bringing international media to normally quiet Bloemfontein, the farming center where the century-old university is based.

In 2006, four white Free State students made a video humiliating black cleaning women and expressing opposition to integrating the historically white school. Jonathan Jansen, who in 2009 became the university’s first black rector, has been credited with pushing for change.