Vanessa Lynn Williams was born in Tarrytown, New York, on March 18, 1963. She is the daughter of Helen and the late Milton Williams, who were music teachers. She has a younger brother, Christopher, who is also an actor. Williams was the first African American woman to win the Miss America title on September 17, 1983. Interestingly, her parents put “Here she is: Miss America” on her birth announcement they sent out to friends twenty years earlier.
During her childhood, Williams took music lessons, learning to play the piano and French horn. Singing, however, was her first love. After graduating from Horace Greeley High School in Tarrytown in 1981, she attended Syracuse University, where she majored in theater arts. It was also at this time that Williams began to compete in several beauty pageants. In 1983, she won the Miss Greater Syracuse pageant, followed by the title of Miss New York and eventually the title of Miss America 1984.
After winning the title, Williams took a leave of absence from school to focus on her Miss America duties. As the first black woman to wear the Miss America crown, she generated controversy. Williams was the recipient of hate mail and death threats from white racists, but she also encountered criticism from certain segments of the black community who questioned whether her green eyes and light-skinned features made her black enough.
Controversy aside, Williams was unquestionably one of the most popular Miss Americas in pageant history. Her magnetism, charisma, and verbal ability endeared her to longtime pageant fans and even won over an entire new generation of pageant viewers.
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