Jersey girl named as Miss Black America

Updated on August 31, 2017 at 12:06 PM Posted on August 31, 2017 at 11:48 AM

By Bill Duhart bduhart@njadvancemedia.com, For NJ.com

A Brigantine native has been crowned Miss Black America after a national competition held in Philadelphia.

Brittany Lewis, a Temple University graduate and third-year Ph.D candidate at George Washington University, competed for Washington, D.C. in the pageant, Philly.com reports. She became the 49th Miss Black America on Saturday.

Lewis is no stranger to beauty-scholarship pageants. She competed in the 2014 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City as a contestant from Delaware. She was a student in a master's degree program then and living in Delaware. She was a first runner up allowed to compete after another contestant was ruled ineligible because of her age. Lewis was 24 then.

Her doctoral work focuses on a history of Atlantic City from 1964 to 1980, the report said. It chronicles the rise of casino gambling there.

The pageant began 50 years ago in Atlantic City to protest the lack of black contestants in the Miss America pageant and to celebrate and promote the beauty and talents of black women.

http://www.nj.com/camden/index.ssf/2017/08/brigantine_native_wins_miss_black_america_pageant.html