- Former Black beauty queens told Insider that pageant life has long been difficult for Black women.
- Two former contestants said they received hate mail and death threats after their historic wins.
- The challenges Black pageant contestants face are in the spotlight after the death of former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst.
When Day Gardner — the first Black woman to place as a top ten semi-finalist at the Miss America pageant in 1977 — first told her mother she wanted to get into pageantry, her mom said to expect to be called the N-word.
"Your mother is right. They're not going to let you win," Gardner's father explained in the early 70s, at a time when US beauty contests were "only won by white girls" and "only white girls participated in them."
"He said, 'Everything your mother said is true — now let's go get your gown,' " Gardner recalled.
Looking back, Gardner, now 66, told Insider, "It's hard to believe, but everything that they said happened. And that's what I didn't expect."
"There were ongoing racial slurs and a number of death threats," she said, adding, "Those years were the happiest, scariest, most disturbing, most joyous, years in my life."
Black former beauty queens in the US like Gardner say pageant life has long been a challenge for Black women as the pageantry world continues to reel from the recent suicide of 30-year-old former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst.
"The pageant itself has progressed. All of these pageants have progressed. The problem is that the rest of the world has not," Gardner said.
When Gardner became the first Black woman to win Miss Delaware in 1976, the odds were stacked against her.
"I entered the Miss America pageant system way back when it really wasn't cool to be a Black pageant girl," she said, noting, "There was no internet back then, but the backlash was extreme nonetheless."
Pageant board members "were so upset" when Gardner was crowned Miss Delaware.
"You're not the type of girl that we would want to represent Delaware," Gardner said she was told.
Gardner recalls reading a stack of mail addressed to her in her Atlantic City hotel room before the 1977 Miss America pageant.
Some letters "were well-wishers," Gardner said. "And then you got the other ones with the racial slurs."
There was one "threatening letter" that warned if Gardner "dared" to get in the car and head to the Miss America pageant "I wouldn't make it to the end."
"It's hard to believe they were talking about killing me because of a pageant," she said.
Gardner said she only told her parents about the death threats years later.
"I didn't want them to know that people would not love me, would not want me," Gardner told Insider, choking up.
Detroit-native Carole Gist, 52 — who made history in 1990 by becoming the first Black woman ever to win the Miss USA crown — had a similar experience with hate mail.
"Social media wasn't around when I won, so there were letters sent and there were calls made, but I was shielded from it," Gist told Insider. "I had death threats, they just didn't tell me about it."
"I thought the security was just regular," she said.
Gist only later found out about the extent of the racist backlash.
"I just chose to focus on those who were open and I tried to turn a blind eye to the negative people," she said. "I chose not to give them the power to make me operate in fear or be anything other than my authentic self."
The former Miss Michigan recalled that a man in a crowd once called out a "racial slur" as he shouted she was not the "ideal" image of beauty.
Racism "was there," said Gist. "I just chose to not let it get under my skin. And I'm grateful that I didn't have social media, because I don't know how the women after who did could endure if they got it bad."
In an essay last year for Allure, Kryst — who authorities say died by suicide on Sunday — detailed being the target of internet trolls who ridiculed her looks as she got older.
"Pageant girls are supposed to be model-tall and slender, don bouffant hair, and have a killer walk," wrote Kryst, a lawyer and Emmy-nominated TV reporter who won the Miss USA title in 2019.
"But my five-foot-six frame won with six-pack abs, earned after years of competing in Division I Track and Field, and a head of natural curls in a time when generations of Black women have been taught that being 'too Black' would cost them wins in the boardroom and on pageant stages," she said.
Kryst, added, "My challenge of the status quo certainly caught the attention of the trolls, and I can't tell you how many times I have deleted comments on my social media pages that had vomit emojis and insults telling me I wasn't pretty enough to be Miss USA or that my muscular build was actually a 'man body.'"
Gist told Insider that she understands what Kryst was dealing with.
"I didn't feel comfortable wearing my hair any other way that I had to straighten it," she said. "I love wearing my hair natural. But I only felt like I would be accepted or looked at as glamorous in that arena if I did that to my hair — like I didn't have a choice."
When she found out about Kryst's death, Gist, who connected with Kryst at past pageants, said she was in "disbelief."
"A lot of my sister queens, we've all had our bout of depression after giving up the crown in various ways," Gist said, adding, "I know I went through it."
Gist said young Black women who are entering the world of pageantry today should "be you."
"Do you, you know? Just go and represent yourself to the best of your ability," she said. "You don't have to change to be anybody else's standard."