From Ophelia DeVore in the 1940's and today's Tyra Banks, Grace Jones, and Naomi Campbell, Black and Beautiful highlights more than sixty years of the Black fashion model's triumphs and struggles. Barbara Summers, a Ford Model for seventeen years, interviewed dozens of models and selected more than 250 photos for this landmark publication. Celebrating the strength and style of these fascinating women and their groundbreaking careers, this book is a gorgeous tribute to the beauty of Black women everywhere.
My wonderful, hard-working father used to call me Daughter #2. He and my mother had 4 girls before their one and only son arrived. We girls were born in Springfield, Mass. When the family moved to Hartford, Conn. my parents literally built our house. My beautiful mother - a Hunter College graduate - mixed the mortar, and my father - a Morehouse man - laid the bricks. Their passionate, productive partnership laid the foundation for my concept of how women and men should - and could - live together.
I went to the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, and the Sorbonne, where I promptly became a grad school dropout and a lifelong Francophile. In the surprising adventure that is my life, I have been a Ford fashion model, a world traveler, a teacher, a writer and editor, a lover, wife, and mother, a sister to several, a good friend to many. I define myself as an artist. Artists are charged with the special responsibility not just to speak truth but to sing it.
I believe:
*We are all related - literally.
*While politicians, terrorists, and maniacs of power strive mightily to prove otherwise, war is not the answer. Love is.
*Sing, and if you can't sing, hum.
