This woman became the first (and only) Jewish Miss America. Then her victory tour was cut short.
In 1945, few brands wanted a Jewish American to endorse their goods
“How many more cemeteries will we be buying for our sons?” asked Bess Myerson in her 1972 Mother’s Day speech. The Vietnam War was raging, and Myerson harshly criticized the Pentagon for spending taxpayers’ money to add to its “inventory of insanity.”
By the seventies, Myerson had earned a reputation as an outspoken political activist, serving on commissions under three presidents, but her name was first known for an altogether different reason. Years earlier, in 1945, the statuesque five-foot-ten beauty had made history as the first (and, to this day, only) Jewish woman to win the Miss America pageant. It was a victory that had broad significance for her community, according to her 2015 obituary in the New York Times: “To many Jews, often blamed for the war by anti-Semites, newly traumatized by images of the liberated Nazi death camps and often confronted by that anti-Semitism in their everyday lives, the title seemed an affirmation of some sort of acceptance in America.” Her victory tour, however, was cut short as appearances were canceled because few brands wanted a Jewish American to endorse their goods. Some country clubs and hotels denied her entry. “I felt so rejected,” she said later. “Here I was, chosen to represent American womanhood, and then America treated me like this. It was shattering.”
After winning the crown, Myerson appeared on television (she had a long-running spot on the game show I’ve Got a Secret) and eventually made a career in politics, helping New York mayor Ed Koch get elected and even making an unsuccessful Senate bid herself. For the daughter of a house painter from the Jewish cooperative housing projects of the Bronx, Myerson had come a long way. Later in life, her reputation was sullied by a bribery scandal the papers called the “Bess Mess.” (She was acquitted.) Still, Myerson is remembered as a Jewish heroine and “a New York favorite daughter.”
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