Vanessa Williams becomes first Black Miss America

Year
1983
Month Day
September 17

On September 17, 1983, 20-year-old Vanessa Williams becomes the first African American to win the Miss America crown. Less than a year later, on July 23, 1984, Williams gave up her crown after nude photos of her surfaced. Despite the scandal, Williams later launched a successful singing and acting career, including a featured role on the television sitcom Ugly Betty.

Vanessa Lynn Williams was born on March 18, 1963, and raised by music-teacher parents in suburban New York City. She attended Syracuse University, where she majored in musical theater. After winning the Miss New York title, Williams went to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to participate in the Miss America pageant. On September 17, 1983, Williams made history by becoming the first African-American woman in the pageant’s 63-year history to capture the Miss America title. (For the competition’s first 30 years, Black women weren’t even allowed to become contestants.) Scandal later erupted, however, when nude photos surfaced of Williams that had reportedly been shot when she worked for a photographer before her pageant days. She was forced to resign her Miss America title in July 1984. The photos later appeared (without Williams’ consent) in Penthouse magazine.

After some time away from the public eye, Williams re-emerged and embarked on a successful music career. In 1988, she released her debut album, The Right Stuff,The Comfort Zone, sold over two million copies and contained the chart-topping single “Save the Best for Last.” Williams’ third album, 1994’s The Sweetest Days, also went platinum. In 1995, she recorded “Colors of the Wind,” the theme song on the soundtrack for the animated feature Pocahontas; the song later earned an Academy Award.

As Williams continued to record and perform music into the coming decade, her acting career heated up. She made her big-screen debut with a small role in 1987’s The Pick-Up Artist, featuring Molly Ringwald and Robert Downey Jr., and also appeared in the 1991 Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder vehicle Another You. She then moved on to co-starring roles in 1996’s Eraser, with Arnold Schwarzenegger; 1997’s Soul Food, whose ensemble cast included Nia Long, Vivica A. Fox and Mekhi Pfifer; the 2000 remake of Shaft, directed by John Singleton and featuring Samuel L. Jackson; and 2004’s Johnson Family Vacation, with Cedric the Entertainer. Williams also racked up credits on the small-screen, including roles on the short-lived series Boomtown and South Beach. From 2006-2010, she co-starred on the hit ABC sitcom Ugly Betty. Williams received multiple Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as the scheming former supermodel Wilhelmina Slater.

Williams has also appeared on Broadway, where she made her debut in 1994 with a starring role in The Kiss of the Spider Woman. She earned a Tony Award nomination for her appearance in the 2002 revival of Into the Woods.

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Soviet Union invades Poland

Year
1939
Month Day
September 17

On September 17, 1939, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declares that the Polish government has ceased to exist, as the U.S.S.R. exercises the “fine print” of the Hitler-Stalin Non-aggression pact—the invasion and occupation of eastern Poland.

Hitler’s troops were already wreaking havoc in Poland, having invaded on the first of the month. The Polish army began retreating and regrouping east, near Lvov, in eastern Galicia, attempting to escape relentless German land and air offensives. But Polish troops had jumped from the frying pan into the fire—as Soviet troops began occupying eastern Poland. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-aggression Pact, signed in August, had eliminated any hope Poland had of a Russian ally in a war against Germany. Little did Poles know that a secret clause of that pact, the details of which would not become public until 1990, gave the U.S.S.R. the right to mark off for itself a chunk of Poland’s eastern region. The “reason” given was that Russia had to come to the aid of its “blood brothers,” the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were trapped in territory that had been illegally annexed by Poland. Now Poland was squeezed from West and East—trapped between two behemoths. Its forces overwhelmed by the mechanized modern German army, Poland had nothing left with which to fight the Soviets.

As Soviet troops broke into Poland, they unexpectedly met up with German troops who had fought their way that far east in a little more than two weeks. The Germans receded when confronted by the Soviets, handing over their Polish prisoners of war. Thousands of Polish troops were taken into captivity; some Poles simply surrendered to the Soviets to avoid being captured by the Germans.

The Soviet Union would wind up with about three-fifths of Poland and 13 million of its people as a result of the invasion.

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