Stepping onstage to be crowned Miss America Vanessa Williams couldn’t believe she was actually there. Although confident in her talent and intelligence, this was 1983 and there had never been a black Miss America before. She had made history.
But it wasn’t long before Vanessa experienced firsthand that not everyone was happy about the positive progression. The actress, now best known for her roles in Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives, says: “It was the quickest lesson to realise that yes, there’s division in the United States. Yes, there is bigotry and prejudice.
" She adds: "I was kind of in a successful bubble, and when I won at twenty years old and being black, I realised, oh I’m getting hate mail because of who I am and what I look like. I was getting death threats, my parents had an FBI file..
.” Being in such a high profile position had lots of positives, but having been brought up in multicultural New York, she was shocked at what she experienced. She continues: “It was the biggest kind of achievement, but also the biggest slap in the face because racism rears its ugly head.
"I was born in 1963 and my parents had me in the middle of John F. Kennedy being shot, Martin Luther King about to be shot, I mean, all this racial unrest, but all this lovely movement for empowerment..
.And I thought those days were over. We had done it and solved it.
” Talking on the food podcast Dish from Waitrose , Vanesssa, now 61, compares her experience to current times. She�.