Foreword / Ericka Dunlap -- "We bring you beauty in bronze": Early African American pageant tradition and the revision of a limited beauty standard -- "They didn't have many queens my color": Colorism, community and growing up during Jim Crow -- "There was a virtual epidemic of negro homecoming queens": Brewing unrest and pageants as student activism in the Civil Rights Movement -- "This is better than being MIss America": African Americans in mainstream contests and the emergence of the Miss Black America Pageant during the Black Power Era -- "Stepping out into finer womanhood": Football classics, coronations and a local civil rights legend training queens in respectability and representation -- "Black beauty wins every year": Miss Black USA's founder and the lasting legacy of African American pageants
