?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
(BEAUTY.) Archive of the first Miss Black America, Saundra Williams, including her trophy. 31 items, various sizes and conditions, some with moderate wear. Vp, bulk 1968-69
The Miss Black America competition was founded in reaction to the largely segregated Miss America. The first pageant was held in Atlantic City, NJ on 7 September 1968--just across town from the Miss America pageant on the same day. The first winner was Saundra Lillian Williams of Philadelphia, a junior sociology major at Maryland State College. Offered here are mementos of her time as Miss Black America: her scrapbook, her photographs, and her iconic trophy. The scrapbook contains 15 items on 8 leaves, mostly original newspaper clippings relating to the competition. Other highlights are a small poster for the 1969 pageant held in Madison Square Garden (with Williams prominently featured as reigning queen), 2 congratulatory notes, her 1966 high school diploma, and her 1971 wedding invitation. A box of loose papers includes 14 photographs of Williams, most about 8 x 10 inches, including 2 duplicates, some from her appearance at the 1969 pageant A thank-you note after her appearance on the Philadelphia television program Blackbook, 2 October 1968 Schedule for a personal appearance, 27 November 1968 Her signed contract with the Miss Black America Corporation, 28 January 1969 Photocopy of the lyrics to the song "Miss Black America" by Curtis Mayfield The official participant's schedule for the 1969 pageant Volume 1, issue 1 of the magazine Miss Black America 7 newspaper clippings and an original typescript poem read by Williams at the pageant titled "Awareness" which concludes "For Black, Black is my color / And my hair is kinky and brown / My nose is wide and my lips are thick / but never again will I hold my head down," [1968]. Two items date from after her marriage, as Sandi Stovall: a résumé from circa 1986, and a clipping of a newspaper interview circa 1991. Finally, the trophy: 21 inches high, with a marble base 3 x 7 inches wide, a vase, a crown made of red cloth, metal, and rhinestones, topped by a statuette. The plaque reads "Sandra Williams, Miss Black America, 1968." The trophy has some minor wear including a skillful repair, the loss of two wings on a little bird on the base, and the loss of a few rhinestones from the crown. It still presents well as the iconic first Miss Black America trophy.
