A pioneer remembers blazing a trail
By Sylvia Elliott
Edited from her master’s thesis
“Let me tell you about the new project we got in at work,” my friend Rose said. “We’re going to be responsible for booking the models for a fashion show of American designers produced by the American Pavilion at the World’s Fair.”
Rosee worked for Eleanor Lambert. Her name was big in New York.
Rose was excited because they were going to start auditioning models during the coming week. The company would look for forty women to work two shows a day, seven days a week.
“Sylvia, I want you to audition!” The words exploded from her mouth.
I shot back, “I’m not a model, for one thing.”
Rose said, “It is the World’s Fair, and Negroes are a part of our culture. People need to see them in the mainstream.”
“When are the auditions? It could be fun.”
When I got to the hotel suite Thursday morning, Rose was waiting for me.There must have been sixty or more women in one room of the suite. Mrs. Lambert had the other room set up for the auditions.
Rose said, “Miriam, pull out that yellow wool Norell suit with the silver and gold striped blouse for Sylvia.”
Miss Lambert looked at me just like she looked at everyone else. There was no difference that I could see, but I was feeling tension. It seemed like a long time before she finally spoke in a scolding voice.
“Who put this girl in a suit? Get her in a swim suit. You never want to hide legs like that.”
Until today, I don’t know if she saw black or white. I don’t think it mattered to her. What she saw was someone who fit both her aesthetic and the business requirements.
It was the World’s Fair, it was New York, and it was 1964. She knew it would work, and there was nothing to discuss. She was making business decisions. Since that day, I’ve learned for the most part white people are not always omitting black people from opportunities – they’re just not thinking about us one way or another.
From there, my runway work took off and I started doing photography as well. I was the first Negro woman to appear in a fashion editorial in the New York Times magazine. Next was Conde Nash publications, publishers of Glamour, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
All the fashion photographers wanted to shoot me because they had never shot a Negro before and they thought it was a challenge. It would give them an opportunity to experiment with lighting and film exposure. The designers wanted me to wear their clothes for the same reasons.
After a few fashion editorials in Ebony and two or three TV commercials, young Negro girls who worked on Seventh Avenue or in the Village recognized me on the street.
The reality here was that less than six months before I was booked for the American Designers Show at the World’s Fair, A. Phillip Randolph had organized the March on Washington where 250,000 Negroes from across the country showed up to urge the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
At the very same moment I was walking out on that runway, George Wallace was standing in the door at The University of Alabama blocking James Hood and Vivian Malone from enrolling.
When I had made the national magazines in New York, John Lewis of the SNCC was leading 500 people across the Pettus Bridge on their way to the capital in Montgomery to demand the enactment of their voting rights.
I happened to be at the right place at the right time for all of my jobs. I don’t think there was a corporate decision made to use Negroes until much later, when blacks become a demographic consideration in marketing strategies.
A few years ago I heard Samuel L. Jackson asked him how he happened to get so many roles not written for black men. He said that studio directors, casting agents and producers first think of their friends or people they know when casting. He would just knock on doors and ask them to let him read. He didn’t see his castings as being political, and neither did I. Samuel L. Jackson this year has been awarded for having the highest grossing body of work in the United States.
The late Sylvia Elliott earned her master’s of fine arts in creative writing at the University of Alabama in 2005 at the age of 67.
A memorial for Sylvia Elliott will be held on Saturday, August 20 from 10 a.m.-noon at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission on Delmar Boulevard. For more information, contact Samantha Elliott Briggs at (205) 391-4573 or micahandcj@hotmail.com.
