Diasporic ambassadors: Black women, pageants, and building connections across the African diaspora in the late twentieth century

Abstract

ABSTRACT The 1965 Hart Cellar Act opened the US borders to African, Latin American, and Caribbean peoples in an unprecedented way. Yet, this migration is an extension of the connections Black people built with each other in the decades before. Black internationalism grew over the course of the twentieth century which laid the foundation for diasporic communities to form across the US in the latter half of the century. In particular, the travel of Black women between Haiti and Chicago helps to explain how a thriving Haitian community formed in the city during the late twentieth century. Black women like Gerthie David, Ms. Haiti 1975, and Marjorie Vincent, Ms. America 1991, exemplify the diasporic ties that were created and strengthened via pageants. This paper argues that Black women used pageants to build diasporic connections (for self and communal interests) and challenge derogatory stereotypes of Blackness and women across the diaspora.