50 years of black beauty queens

In 1945, when Ebony was founded, the unique beauty of Black women was banned almost everywhere in White America. There were no Black models in commercial advertisements or on the pages of fashion magazines, and Black women were barred from entering state and national beauty pageants.

Despite this pervasive White-out, the irrepressible beauty of Black women continued to flower and flourish in fashion shows and local beauty pageants sponsored by Black Americans in their school auditoriums, church basements and YWCA gymnasiums. The launching of Ebony, which was founded in part to illustrate--in the old sense of making illustrious--the rainbow-beauty of Blackness, gave a new twist to this age-old struggle. From the beginning, the magazine printed photographs of Black women of every imaginable hue--smoke, chocolate, apricot and cream. Of equal, and perhaps even greater importance, the advertising and editorial staffs launched an ultimately successful campaign for the employment of Black models in ads.

As a result of these efforts, and the rising consciousness of Blacks, the tide finally began to shift in favor of Black beauty. In 1961, for example, Corrine Huff of Ohio became the first Black to wear a state crown. Not long afterwards, Blacks began forming national pageants of their own, from Miss Sepia to Miss Fine Brown Frame to Miss Bronze America. In 1968, Saundra Williams, a 19-year-old singer from Philadelphia, was crowned the first Miss Black America.

Despite these pressures, the Miss America pageant maintained its lily-White facade, and it was not until 1984, 63 years after the event was founded, that an African-American woman, Vanessa Lynn Williams, a musical theater major at Syracuse University, was named Miss America.

To the dismay of some and the delight of many, four additional African-American women--Miss New Jersey Suzette Charles (1984); Miss Missouri Debbye Lynn Turner (1990); Miss Illinois Marjorie Judith Vincent (1991), and Miss South Carolina Kimberly Clarice Aiken (1994)--also wore the Miss America crown during the next 10 years.

From the beginning, state and national pageant officials tended to favor light-skinned Blacks. But the Miss America Pageant moved steadily toward darker tones and crowned two beautiful brown-skinned women in back-to-back pageants. During the same period, two Black women also won the Miss U.S.A. title, and Chelsi Smith holds the 1995 Miss U.S.A. and Miss Universe titles.

In these years and afterwards, Black beauty became a standard of its own, with Hollywood and the fashion industry adopting curvaceous figures, plump lips, full behinds and a so-called "ethnic look."

Thus, during the last 50 years, Black beauty has moved from the periphery to the center of our national life.