Miss Black America of MilwaukeeIn 1981 and 1984, Vel Phillips was a judge for the Miss Black America

Miss Black America of Milwaukee

In 1981 and 1984, Vel Phillips was a judge for the Miss Black America of Milwaukee pageant. These pageant programs are from her personal papers at UWM Archives: Milwaukee Mss 231, Box 82, Folders 13 and 14. 

The national competition, Miss Black America, started in 1968 in Philadelphia as a protest against the exclusion of Black women in the Miss America pageant. With the support of the NAACP, the pageant received nationwide press coverage and was televised in 1977, the year of Milwaukee’s first competition. According to Mayor Henry Maier’s 1984 proclamation, winners were chosen for representing “the best qualities of young Black womanhood” and were judged “on the basis of their intelligence, poise, beauty, and talent.” 

Susan Wells and Sonya Robinson (pictured above), both contestants of Miss Black America of Milwaukee, went on to win the national title of Miss Black America in 1982 and 1983, respectively.

Miss Black America disrupted the rhetoric that shaped women’s beauty standards of the 1960s and 1970s and proved to Black women and girls that their Blackness was indeed beautiful. The pageant continues today, celebrating more than 50 years of Black beauty, culture, and identity. 

- Jamee, Archives Graduate Intern