Fashion
Without Naomi Sims, There Would Be No Naomi Campbell
Or America’s Next Top Model (ANTM)
On March 30, 1948, A. Phillip Randolph went to D.C. to meet with President Harry S. Truman on behalf of the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training African Americans. Randolph told the President that Black Americans would not continue to serve in a segregated U.S. Army, laying the foundation for military desegregation.
Just under 900 miles away in Oxford, Mississippi, Elizabeth Sims was giving birth to her youngest child, a baby girl who would eventually desegregate another quintessential American institution — the beauty industry. her name was Naomi Ruth Sims.
Hailed as the first Black American supermodel, Naomi broke down barriers within the modeling industry and paved the way for other melanated model-turned-moguls like Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell to shine in an industry inundated with and defined by white standards of beauty.
But before all that, she was a gangly kid with humble beginnings and a somewhat troubled childhood.
Naomi’s parents divorced when she was a toddler. She never knew her father, but her mother called him “an absolute bum.” Shortly after they separated, Naomi moved with her mother and two older sisters to…
