Vanessa Williams: Revisiting 1984 Miss America Sex Scandal… “Molestation made me Sexually Promiscuous”

Vanessa L. Williams in 1983

Fun Fact: When actress/singer Vanessa Williams was born, her parents announced her birth with “Here she is: Miss America.” In 1984, she became the first African American to be crowned Miss America.

Revisiting Vanessa Williams’ 1984 Miss America Win And Scandal: Other Black Winners Weigh In

Vanessa Williams became the pageant’s most famous winner, but her treatment during the 1984 scandal remains fresh for other Black contestants

The Miss America pageant competition was a major part of American culture for decades after its founding in 1921. In the sixty-plus years that the competition was held prior to Vanessa Williams’ win in 1983, the pageant had only ever crowned white Miss Americas. When Williams won the crown 40 years ago this month, it was a watershed moment that inspired young girls of color all over the country.

For the first three decades of the Miss America pageant, Black contestants weren’t even allowed to enter. The first Black contestant was Cheryl Browne, Miss Iowa, in 1970, but it would be 14 years before the color line at the crown would be broken.

Vanessa Williams,first black woman to win the Miss America Title 1983

Vanessa Williams made history on September 17, 1983, when she became the first black woman to win the Miss America Title in 1983

The Messenger takes a look at Williams’ win, the scandal which caused her to step down and the enduring legacy both had on the Black contestants who followed:

Williams was a standout contestant from the start

A Bronx Native raised by music teachers in New York’s upstate suburbs, Williams excelled at multiple instruments and studied music and dance in college. Her musical ability would play a significant role in her winning the Miss America pageant in 1984.

After her freshman year of college at Syracuse University, Williams worked as a summer receptionist for a photographer who often arranged nude photos. She took the opportunity to pose for photos with another model when she was offered, but upon seeing them, she asked for them to be destroyed.

Vanessa Williams in Daytime Divas [S1E7-2017]
byu/Roger_Gold inCelebsOfColorNSFW

A year or so later, Williams was approached about competing in the Miss Greater Syracuse competition. Without any prior pageant experience, she was crowned both Miss Greater Syracuse and Miss New York State in 1983. She went on to win the Miss America crown that year as well — only six months after first entering the pageant world.

A nude photo scandal affected her win as the first Black Miss America

Williams held the crown for most of that year’s reign before the photos she took at her old summer job were published without her consent in the men’s magazine Penthouse. The media unleashed a firestorm of negativity on Williams that she would later describe as “betrayal and humiliation, that happened to me on a grand scale.”

At first a shining example of dissolving color lines and changing times, Williams became a target for public shaming. “People would ride by the house and beep things and yell stuff,” Williams told ABC in 2015. “They took down the sign in Millwood, New York: “Home of Miss America.” The pageant’s board asked her to resign.

On July 23, 1984, Williams would make history again as the first winner to give up her title. Runner-up Suzette Charles, a biracial Black woman, would finish out the remainder of the year as Miss America.

Charles told The Messenger that she remained focused on the opportunity at hand when she was passed the title. “The pageant was another space to do my best and show my talent,” she said. “I enjoy performing and enjoyed the opportunity that experience gave me.” Even though Charles was the second Black woman to hold the title and had a successful seven-week reign, Williams’ resignation still left a sour taste in the mouths of some.

Cameron-Jackson said that when she was younger, her mother had always left the scandal out of the story whenever she talked about Williams. “I’m glad she [did],” she said. “[My mother] chose to honor Vanessa in the manner she deserved.”

However, after learning about it as a teenager, Cameron-Jackson said she was appalled by the way Williams was treated: “The [Miss America] organization, in self-preservation mode, chose to turn its back on her and the media chose to crucify her.”

‘Being molested made me sexually promiscuous’: Vanessa Williams in tell-all BOMBSHELL

VANESSA Williams is opening up about the sexual molestation she suffered at the hands of an older woman when she was just 10.

“At that young age, having that happen to you, in your body, it awakens your sexuality at an age where it shouldn’t be awakened,” the actress, 51, said on the latest episode of Oprah’s Master Class.

According to the former Miss America, the trauma occurred on a trip with family friends to California when she was just a girl. One of the members of the travelling party, an 18-year-old woman whom the younger Williams admired, came into her room and molested her.

She wasn’t old enough to know what was taking place, but she knew that it wasn’t something that was supposed to be happening.

“At 10 years old, I had no idea what it was, but I knew it felt good,” Williams said. “And I knew I shouldn’t be saying anything, and I didn’t tell anyone. But I knew it felt good, but also something that was not supposed to be happening.”

Although Williams wanted to tell her parents what happened when she got back to New York, she never got the chance, as her father’s brother had just died.

“That was a family drama. Never really talked to my dad about it … and kind of suppressed it,” she said.

She noted that the incident has had a long-lasting impact.

“Had that not happened in my life and had I had an opportunity to have a normal courtship with a boyfriend at 16 or whatever and have your normal first kiss, there wouldn’t have been that shame that was always haunting me,” she said. “It made me more sexually promiscuous and more curious at a younger age than I should have been.”

Williams has previously written about the molestation in her 2012 memoir, You Have No Idea.

On July 23,1984,Vanessa Williams gave up her Miss America title, the first resignation in the pageant’s history, after Penthouse magazine announces plans to publish nude photos of the beauty queen in its September issue

Vanessa Lynn Williams(DOB March 18, 1963)in 1982, while working a summer job as a receptionist at a modeling agency in Mt. Kisco, New York, photographer Thomas Chiapel took the nude pictures of Williams, telling her they’d be shot in silhouette and that she wouldn’t be recognizable. After Williams became Miss America, the photographer sold the pictures to Penthouse without her knowledge.