Miss Black Spokane: An empowering chapter in Spokane’s history

The history of the Black experience in Spokane is marred with segregation in housing, discrimination at the workplace and hatred in schools. Also marking this experience are contrasting moments of joy, community and celebration in events like the little-known Miss Black Spokane pageant, which empowered young Black women in 1970s Spokane.

In poise, femininity and grace, beauty queens like Miss America are marketed as an ideal for women across the nation. But pageant franchises almost exclusively celebrated a Eurocentric standard of beauty unattainable to women of color.

“Beauty pageants were not really opening the door to African Americans or other races that much,” said 1975 Miss Black Spokane Deborah Clark, who also goes by Deborah LaPearl.

Until the 1950s, the Miss America pageant had on its books a rule specifying contestants must be “of the white race.” While hopefuls entered at local preliminaries for Miss America and Miss USA franchises, Black women seldom claimed titles. Miss America didn’t have its first Black contestant until 1970 or victor until Vanessa Williams in 1983.

Frustrated with watching Black women claw their way into a hostile, unwelcome space, J. Morris Anderson founded the first Miss Black America in 1968. Held at the same time, just four blocks from the Miss America competition in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the event was part protest, part celebration, all for Black women.

Demand for local preliminaries grew, and two years later, the first Miss Black Spokane was underway, featuring six young women vying for the crown. To enter, contestants were between the ages of 17 and 25, had or were pursuing a high school education and unmarried, a rule they broke in 1977 to allow more entrants.

“It will give Black people something to be proud of,” pageant contestant Constance D. Duncan told the Chronicle in 1970.

Glam squads and affirmations

The pageant drew sponsorship from the NAACP, the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Black women’s club Les Dames Tapestry.

“We conduct this contest to give a number of girls who otherwise would never get a chance at this kind of competition. The reaction last year was good in the Black community of Spokane,” then-contest chairman Nellie Lay said in 1972.

Each pageant had five to 10 contestants, polished to perfection by the likes of Black salon owner Sarah Gardner and other community members.

Gardner was a vivacious community organizer and prominent figure among Spokane’s Black population. She was revered as a business owner, operating the only salon in the area that specialized in Black hair.

It became a gathering place. From politicians to pimps to pageant participants, everyone passed through Miss Sarah’s chair, her granddaughter said.

“My grandmother’s salon was always that refuge for the Black community, for people to go, and they would have meetings in her salon, they would talk about the issues that are plaguing them in Spokane,” said Lisa Gardner, Sarah’s granddaughter. “Or they would rejoice and they would fellowship and talk about the milestones and celebrations.”

As a diva herself and the go-to beautician for Black women in Spokane, she would be involved in preparing hair and makeup. Sarah expertly styled the girls’ hair, trimming and shaping Afros, and neatly pinning beehives. She selected and applied the right makeup to ensure the contestants put their best face forward.

“She let you know if you didn’t look right,” Clark said. “Like how a person would look and she’d say, ‘Girl, take that off.’ ”

In addition to outer beauty, Sarah coached pageant contestants on poise, etiquette and pride. She made it her mission to affirm the young Black women, building their self-esteem leading up to the pageant.

“Especially during a time where (people were) told it was bad to be Black, she instilled pride into these young women,” Lisa Gardner said. “Especially when it comes to a beauty contest, she was able to be that source of empowerment for young Black women in Spokane.”

For Clark, mothers where she lived on Fairchild Air Force Base took on roles as ladylike drill sergeants. She recalls marching in heels while balancing books on her head, answering spontaneous questions and memorizing trivia. Though she was nervous to compete, Clark’s support system ensured she was well-prepared and reminded her to “just do her best.”

Pageant day

Through the years, venues consisted of schools, hotels and, in Clark’s year, the NCO club at the base. The Chronicle in 1979 reported about 250 people in attendance at that year’s pageant at the Davenport Hotel.

In 1975 when she was 19, Clark recalls looking out into an audience of mostly Black people, shocked to see the turnout.

“It was totally packed,” she said. “And it had never been so packed before.”

Pageant categories varied year by year, consisting of talent, evening wear, bathing suit and spontaneous question.

Clark, a fashion designer who lives in New Jersey, said it was the talent portion that won her the crown, performing a knife-wielding martial arts demonstration to the song “Kung Fu Fighting.” At one point, impulses took over muscle memory and she hurled the knife into the air on a whim.

“When I realized I did that, I still didn’t hear anything but my heart beating fast. ‘Get that knife now before it stabs you,’ ” she recalls telling herself. “Lord, did I just do that? I got to catch it now.”

Through terror of impending impalement and riding the high of the performance, she caught it, right on the handle, wowing the audience and judges.

Other women showed off talents in baton twirling, singing and dramatic readings. The 1979 winner, Jocelyn E. Eldridge, performed a “spirited” interpretive dance in American Sign Language to John Denver’s “The Eagle and the Hawk,” earning her the title.

Using their platform

In addition to their role in welcoming Black dignitaries to Spokane and riding on parade floats, several winners used the platform earned by their victory to address race relations in the city, often outspoken about their experience in such a stark minority.

Spokane at the time was 98% white. The 1970 census reported only 3,000 Black people in Spokane, about 1% of the city’s population.

Jacinta D. McKoy, the 17-year-old Miss Black Spokane in 1977, felt the Black community was misunderstood, and dedicated her reign to educating Spokane and correcting misconceptions.

“Blacks aren’t a group of radicals interested in ‘taking over’ the city; we simply want to be a part of it,” she said.

A Spokesman-Review column from the time urged readers to listen to McKoy.

“We don’t know each other as well as we should, here in Spokane,” the column reads. “In a town this size, that knowing should be easy.”

Clark painted a picture of a Spokane at the time, still in its infancy and unwilling to accept those who fell outside the white majority.

“You still have people trying to shut the door. They don’t want you at their house. They don’t want the kids talking to you. Or you go to the classrooms, you got people pointing at you or calling you names,” Clark said. “They didn’t know why they were doing that, they were just doing it because they didn’t know anything. You know, they were just still developing, I call it.”

Clark, having traveled the world as the daughter of an Air Force airman, noted that Spokane was far behind other places in racial progress. When she arrived as a teenager, the racism was disorienting.

“When I was overseas, I found that people got along better,” she told The Spokesman-Review after her victory.

At schools, community events, even in their own homes, racism was prevalent. Juanita Leslie, now 89, recalled a time in 1969 when her family dog was stolen, killed and used in a Ku Klux Klan ritual. Clark said she was repeatedly called a racial slur in school. Discrimination in the workplace was constant, they each said.

From all angles, Black people were “otherized,” emphasizing the importance of events like Miss Black Spokane that celebrate Black beauty.

“When the beauty standard is blonde hair, blue eyes, what are you telling me, that I’m not beautiful? That Blackness isn’t beautiful?” Lisa Gardner said. “So no, it is. So we’re going to tell you that it is, empower you that it is, by having this Black beauty pageant, and you, beautiful Black girl, you can be a beautiful Black beauty queen.”

Seeing Miss Black Spokane ride parade floats alongside white counterparts, all wearing sparkling tiaras, colorful sashes and elegant gowns, is an image Leslie said was important for younger generations of Black girls.

“Seeing that would give the other Black girls that were coming up behind them some incentive to want to do that themselves,” said Leslie, a lifelong Spokane resident. “After Debbie was in there, they see what can be done.”

Miss Black Spokane’s Legacy

While Black pageantry remains in full force, Miss Black Spokane no longer operates. The Spokesman-Review’s final coverage of the event was in 1979. The Miss Black America franchise is ongoing, but it takes direct applications rather than hosting city and state preliminaries.

Leslie, born and raised in Spokane and considered one of the city’s Black pioneers, said the history and significance of Miss Black Spokane needs to be shared, especially since many of those involved have since died.

Not only did Black pageants give more women the opportunity to be crowned as beauty queens, but they sent a message to the world that Black, in all shades and hair textures, is beautiful.

“So being that it was a Miss Black America, well, that’s perfect because nobody else was opening the door to let you in. Even though some were slowly allowing it, but you just had a one out of 1,000 chances of just being able to get into the other pageants,” Clark said.

“So now you have a Miss Black America, your hair is not totally straight, might be wavy, might be curly, might be whatever, you can be yourself.”