Vanessa Williams: Colorist Comments From Black People When I Won Miss America Were 'Hurtful'
Vanessa Williams made history as the first Black Miss America but she said the milestone was met with harsh criticism from the Black community.
Speaking to on A&E’s The Table is Ours podcast, Williams said “I was not seen as a 20-year-old, who is a junior in college. I was seen as a symbol but also seen as a Black woman, and also seen as someone who was supposed to represent the American beauty. And there are a lot of folks that did not believe that having brown skin and being a Black woman represented the Miss America ideal,” she said.
“I had death threats. I had sharpshooters when I did my homecoming parade. There were sharpshooters on the top of roofs of my hometown, just because of the threat, the threats that were, you know, against me because of who I was.”
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