Naomi Sims was the first Black SuperModel

From Mississippi Tribune Staff Reports

Naomi Sims, considered by many to be the first black supermodel, died over the past weekend following a long battle with cancer, according to her son, Bob Findlay. She was 61.

The Mississippi native was born on March 30, 1949, in Oxford, MS, grew up a foster child in Pittsburgh and broke into the modeling business in the mid-sixties after moving to New York City. At 5’10”, with dark skin, Sims had not been considered particularly attractive as a teenager. “Black wasn’t beautiful then,” she said in Black Enterprise. “The darker your skin, the less good-looking you were considered; and I was too tall, and too skinny.”

After appearing on the covers of several high profile magazines, she became the first black woman to grace the cover of “Ladies’ Home Journal” in November 1968. Later she appeared on the covers of Life, Cosmopolitan and Essence, sewing the seeds of what would become the Black is Beautiful movement.

Sims launched several successful businesses in the 70s, including a wig company for black women that became a multi-million dollar enterprise. She has also written several books.