First Black Miss America - On September 17, 1983, 20-year-old Vanessa Williams becomes the first Black woman to win the Miss America crown. Less than a year later, on July 23, 1984, Williams gave up her crown after nude photos of her surfaced. History was being made at the Miss America pageant. There were four African American contestants, the most ever in a single year: Vanessa, Suzette Charles of New Jersey, Amy Keys of Maryland and Deneen Graham of North Carolina. Pageant folks had noticed something else about them: They were good. Maybe this could be the year the pageant would move beyond its long, uncomfortable racial history — perhaps even crown a Black winner?
For decades, race was a stubborn nonissue for Miss America — there simply weren’t any Black participants, because the doors were not open to them on any level, same as in many quadrants of American society. Racism was formalized a couple of years after Lenora Slaughter, an upper-crust doyenne from heavily segregated Florida, arrived in 1935 to take over operations of the pageant. Bent on upgrading the reputation of what started as a raucous seaside swimsuit contest, she imposed age restrictions and codes of conduct — and the so-called “Rule Seven,” which mandated that contestants “be of good health and of the white race.” Even after it was lifted in the 1950s, a racial status quo lingered, thanks to a contestant pipeline that funneled through chummy small-town pageants, where organizers could set strict residency requirements or limit entry to invitation-only.
In 1959, Black women won local crowns for the first time, in Sacramento and at Indiana University. Yet as of 1968, no state had sent a Black winner to Miss America. That August, three weeks before Miss America, the first Miss Black America pageant was held in Atlantic City. It was both a protest of historic exclusion and a celebration of the Black-is-beautiful movement. The wait ended a year later, when Cheryl Browne was crowned Miss Iowa 1970. It would take another decade for a Black woman to make it to the Miss America top 5. By 1983, only about a dozen African American women had ever walked the Miss America stage. While Vanessa and Suzette had been feted in their home states as “firsts,” the milestone was even more profound for a North Carolinian like Deneen Graham, 19, a soft-spoken dancer from small-town North Wilkesboro.

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"For better or worse, Miss America will always be a part of me," Vanessa Williams once wrote. "It doesn't define me, but it will always be a part of my story."