The Miss Subways pageant, which ran from the 1940s to the 1970s, was one of the first integrated beauty pageants in the USA. The first black Miss Subways was picked in 1948 and the first Asian-American winner, Helen Lee, above, won in 1949.
Given how Miss America is fading from public view, the Subways pageant (once Miss, then Ms. on its 2004 revival) may be seen quaint and charmingly of another era — up there with gas-guzzling Cadillacs and vinyl records.But the Miss Subways pageant, which ran from 1941 to 1977, was a cutting-edge civil rights battleground.
It was one of the first beauty pageants in America to become integrated, in part because of a coordinated campaign by black groups throughout the 1940s. Some 35 years before Vanessa Williams became the first black Miss America, the Miss Subways pageant selected a Brooklyn College student as its first black winner in 1948. The first Asian-American Miss Subway was anointed a year later in 1949.
Some historians point to Miss Subways as an important — though mostly symbolic — stepping stone for racial integration. Just as activists would go on to organized against discrimination or exclusion in transportation and in the workplace, black women chose beauty pageants as a battleground. MORE HERE..
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