Helen Williams Jackson, 1961
*This date in 1937 is celebrated as the birth date of Helen Williams Jackson, a Black dancer and fashion model.
Born Helen Williams from Riverton, New Jersey, she showed a great obsession with fashion at an early age and even began sewing her garments at 7. Before becoming a New York photography studio stylist, she studied dance, art, and drama. At 17, personalities such as Lena Horne and Sammy Davis Jr. began to notice her work and urged her to pursue fashion and modeling.
Williams worked exclusively with Ebony and Jet magazines. However, in 1960, she relocated to France due to the discrimination she faced in the United States. She found successful modeling for famous designers Christian Dior and Jean Dessès. “Over there, I was ‘La Belle Americaine,’” she recalled. By the end of her tenure, she was making $7,500 a year working part-time. She had received three marriage proposals from her French admirers, one of whom reportedly kissed her feet and whispered, “I worship the ground you walk on mademoiselle.”
After Paris, Williams returned to America, where the stigma of race was worst, especially toward darker-toned Black females. She was repeatedly told " No " when searching for modeling agencies. While searching for a new agent in New York City, she was once told by an agency that they already have “one black model already, thanks.” However, she was persistent and would not take no for an answer. “I was pushy and positive,” she recalled. Despite being rejected, she decided to take her case to the press.
Two white journalists, Dorothy Kilgallen and Earl Wilson, wrote about her cause, ultimately bringing attention to the exclusion of black models within the modeling and fashion industry. Suddenly, doors began to open, and Williams started getting to work. She was booked for various jobs for brands such as Budweiser, Loom Togs, Sears, and Modess, which crossed over for the first time into the mainstream press in periodicals such as The New York Times, Life, and Redbook. By 1961, her hourly rate had shot up to $100 an hour.
Williams was the first Black Fashion Model to break color barriers in the 1950s and cross into mainstream fashion. She was triumphant in her career in an age and era when mainstream beauty and fashion excluded non-white models. Even more so, she pushed through colorism within the African American modeling scene, where models were required to be light-skinned (just like the black chorus girls of the 1920s). Williams was one of the first clients of Ophelia DeVore’s Grace De Marco modeling agency. DeVore (former model turned agent) was a shrewd businesswoman with keen insight and endless aspirations, crashed stereotypes, and empowered her clients by teaching them poise, confidence, and the courage to get ahead in a world deeply etched by racial discrimination.
Through her modeling agency, DeVore helped launch the early careers of many black celebrities, including actresses Diahann Carroll Cicely Tyson and actor Richard Roundtree. Needless to say, Helen benefited under her tutelage. DeVore continued to follow Helen’s career through personal correspondence and the press and kept letters, photographs, and press clippings, both positive and negative, in carefully organized binders. In 2004, she received the Trailblazer Award from the Fashion & Arts Xchange organization at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology ceremony.
Helen Williams retired from modeling in 1970 but continued her career in fashion as a stylist. In 1977, she married Norm Jackson, whom she had met during her modeling days. They reside in Riverton, New Jersey.
