Miss Black America Contestant, Phyllis D. Wilson

Miss Black America Contestant, Phyllis D. Wilson

This is a newspaper feature of Phyllis D. Wilson, a competitor in the Miss Black America Pageant. The Miss Black Nebraska competition was an annual event, first held in 1970 with the winner going on to participate in the Miss Black America pageant. At the same time that women’s liberation activists were protesting the Miss America pageant for its objectification of women, black women were protesting their exclusion from beauty pageants by staging their own Miss Black America contest. They viewed this as a challenge to white-defined concepts of beauty and an assertion of race pride.

Great Plains Black History Museum, North Omaha History Harvest, 2011

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Newspaper photograph

English

Image

Omaha (Neb.)