They called me Miss Utah

When I competed in my first beauty pageant I was 15 years old. There would be well over a dozen more including the last one at HOWARD UNIVERSITY where I was last crowned Miss School of  Business in 1984. I grew up trying to become a beauty queen.

When I competed in pageants, usually I was the only Black contestant. I was usually the only non-white contestant, non-Mormon contestant. I was often 1-st runner up to a beautiful blond hair, blue eyed beauty. That is until the day I won. Not only did I win, I won BIG. My mother was there, my grandmother, who flew in from Flint, Michigan for the occasion was there also. It was a big night, Momma had taken off of work to be in the audience. I won every single award that night except MOST PHOTOGENIC. I won best talent, best interview question/answer and Miss Congeniality. This was a special award to me because it was the one award chosen by the other fifty or so contestants for whom they believed best deserved to be crowned that evening. I also won the illustrious title of MISS TEEN UTAH and took my time strolling down the runway. From there I would go onto FLORIDA  for the nationally televised competition hosted by Pat Boone.

The night I was crowned Miss Teen Utah the audience walked out in the middle of my crowning. They simply walked out to show their utter disgust of me standing on stage parading a crown and standing in front of nearly every trophy that was awarded. How they thought could I be prettier, smarter, more talented, more worthy of anything than the white faces on that stage we shared? I was devastated. Mostly I did not want my mother and grandmother to feel the utter shame I felt inside. They both grew up in Mississippi during Jim Crow, so I am not really sure I needed to protect them from anything.

The next day the President of the NAACP came to my home to discuss what had happened the night before. And before the day was out all that had happened was written up in the State's largest newspaper. I became more than a beauty queen. I became a purpose. I became a symbol of tolerance, acceptance and change. In the paper, I spoke about how we were assigned four to a hotel room in two double beds. Imagine how I felt when three beauties slept in one bed because not one of them wanted to sleep beside my mocha skin. I told the paper that I just wanted people to know that we are all the same and if given the chance we could make a better world for all of us. I was sixteen years old sitting in my small cluttered living room with a reporter from the other side of the tracks, wearing a crown that meant less to me by the moment and trying to talk grown up like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. might sound. I really had just wanted to be more than 1-st runner up. I had really just wanted to be recognized for my beauty inside and out.

What I remember now is being on national television and hearing Pat Boone say, La Detra, lovely La Detra. And not a single person came from the Utah Pageant to support me. Change takes time. It starts with beauty on the inside.