Atlantic City was eighteen hundred miles away. But distance was not a barrier to a Lakota girl aspiring to be crowned Miss America. Race was the issue.

Shortly before the arrival of the Freedom Train in April 1948, the Rapid City Musicians union announced that it would sponsor the first-ever “Miss Rapid City” beauty pageant. Contestants would appear on stage three times: once in evening gowns, then to show off their talent, and finally in bathing suits.

The women would be judged by nine Black Hills civic leaders, including the executive editor of the newspaper, several local drama and music teachers, the president of the local labor association, Rapid City’s new mayor Earl Brockelsby, and the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who had recently announced plans to carve a mountain to honor the Lakota warrior Crazy Horse.  

To ensure that the winner would be eligible to compete for the title of Miss South Dakota and ultimately Miss America, the musician’s union announced that the contest would follow the Miss America guidelines. It would be open to any young woman “in good health and of the white race.”   

When Eileen Keegan, a school teacher and local dance instructor, heard about the rules for the pageant, she immediately sent a letter to the editor of the paper. Even if the rules were made by the national committee, she wrote, “do Rapid City people have to be represented in something so narrow?”[1] Two days later, the chair of the Miss Rapid City Beauty Contest responded, agreeing with Keegan’s sentiments and urging that “all letters of protest regarding racial discrimination in beauty contests” be forwarded to the Miss America Pageant committee.

When Eva Nichols read about the racial restrictions, she decided she had had enough. An enrolled member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, Nichols was born in Lyons, Nebraska in 1902. Like many Native children in her generation, she was separated from her family and sent to boarding school. After graduating, she relocated to Sioux City, Iowa where she went to business college. Nichols was more interested in teaching than typing. She joined the staff of a boarding school on the Rosebud Indian Reservation and also taught at the Pierre Indian Boarding School and the He Dog School. In 1923, she married Roy Roubideaux, and the next year they moved to Rapid City.[2]

The marriage did not last, but it produced a son, Ramon, who would later become a prominent civil rights attorney and Native American activist. While Ramon was young, however, Eva took government jobs in several states in the northern Great Plains. In 1942, following the US entry into World War II, she returned to Rapid City and landed a job as payroll-personnel clerk at the Sioux Sanitorium. Two years later, she married George Nichols.

During the war and afterwards, Nichols Increasingly became an outspoken advocate for Native people. She organized economic assistance for low-income Native families in Rapid City and on nearby reservations. Earlier in 1948, she was elected president of the Black Hills Council of American Indians. In public and in private, she was unafraid to challenge prevailing white prejudice and discrimination, even if it meant taking on the Miss America Pageant.

With patriotism in the air days before the arrival of the Freedom Train, Nichols delivered to the newspaper a copy of the letter she sent to the Miss America Pageant committee.[3] She described the pageant’s racial restrictions as “one of the most un-American forms of discrimination this western part of the country has seen in all its history of contests.” She noted that many of the members of the Musician’s Union in Rapid City were young Native men “who are outstanding musicians in the area” and “make no apology for their race.” Nichols also praised “the beauty of Indian girls” and noted that Darlene DeCory, a Native student in Rapid City, had been crowned “Snow Queen” in a statewide contest that winter.[4]

Nichols understood how racism against Native people in 1948 fit within the larger picture of discrimination in America. Suggesting that Atlantic City was close enough to the South to be imbued with Jim Crow attitudes, she wrote, “you may feel justified in segregating your contestants and denying the Negroes the right to enter the contest. But our Indian population is rising up in arms against this kind of discrimination. It is our aim to fight this, not only locally, but nationally as well.”

Nichols’ protest was well-timed. Several weeks earlier the Chamber of Commerce in Ephrata, Washington, in open defiance of the national rules, refused to discriminate against a Native entrant to its beauty contest.[5] Organizers in Atlantic City in 1948 might also have been aware of how the Miss America Pageant itself had celebrated Native women in its first competition 22 years earlier when it featured Jesse Jim, the Spokane Indian Congress’s reigning Princess America II, on the stage with the pageant’s first winner.[6]

The day after her protest was published, the Rapid City Musicians Union’s board of directors met and voted unanimously to drop any restriction tied to color or race. In open defiance of the national contest, the group also pledged to support the winner in the state pageant regardless of any discriminatory ruling on race. In a statement to the press, the head of the union noted that the American Federation of Musicians had a long history of advocating for racial equality and combatting discrimination and segregation. The chairman of the event urged “all girls” to consider entering the contest. When contacted by the press, the director of the Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce, sponsors of the state pageant, promised that they too would fight the “white race” rule in the national pageant’s regulations.[7]

Pageant officials in Atlantic City quickly responded to the insurgency in western South Dakota. Executive director Lenora S. Slaughter told the press that the Miss America Pageant would welcome entries by Native women. In a letter to Eva Nichols she wrote, “We can be proud and happy to accept a candidate with Indian blood.” [8]

For African American women, it was a different question. “We have eliminated the negro from this contest due to the fact that it is absolutely impossible to judge fairly the beauty of the negro race in comparison with the white race,” Slaughter said. Six more years would have to pass before the US Supreme Court ruled that separate was inherently unequal. In the meantime, Lenora Slaughter asserted that Black women had the Miss Sepia America contest, and she could congratulate herself and her organization by writing, “We have assisted the people running this contest at all time[s] and they understand fully our position.”[9]

Eva Nichols shared this letter with the newspaper and announced that “several local Indian girls are considering entering the [Miss Rapid City] contest. Obviously relieved to have the issue resolved, the head of the musicians’ union said “it would be impossible to hold a real Miss America contest in Rapid City without having representation of the Indian race.” [10]

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[1] Eileen Keegan, “Beauty Contests,” Rapid City Journal, April 12, 1948, 9.

[2] Dick Rebbeck, “Indian activist Eva Nichols dies,” Rapid City Journal, February 22, 1994, 11.

[3] “Local Indian Protests Beauty Contest Rules,” Rapid City Journal, April 15, 1948, 2.

[4] “Rapid City Cracks ‘Miss America’ Ban,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 25, 1948, 31.

[5] “Beauty Contest Race Ban Outlawed,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 27, 1948, 1.

[6] https://wyostatearchives.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/princess-america-ii-jesse-jim-visits-cheyenne/

[7] “Musicians Eliminate Contest Race Clause,” Rapid City Journal, April 16, 1948, 2.

[8] “National Beauty Pageant Okays Indian Entries,” Rapid City Journal, April 24, 1948, 1.

[9] “National Beauty Pageant Okays Indian Entries,” Rapid City Journal, April 24, 1948, 1.

[10] “National Beauty Pageant Okays Indian Entries,” Rapid City Journal, April 24, 1948, 1.