“I’m a Southern girl, but I’m a thinking girl.”

A remarkable woman who has fascinated me for decades. Born in Mobile Alabama (a few miles across the state line from my hometown of Pensacola) and Roman Catholic convent educated and an aspiring opera singer who later became a Washington D.C. socialite married to a movie mogul, she was crowned Miss America in 1950 and promptly refused to publicly model bathing suits as required by her Miss America contract and the Miss America sponsor, Catalina Swimwear. The pageant caved in to her, Catalina withdrew its sponsorship and founded the rival Miss U.S.A. contest.

She went on to to become a social activist in the civil rights and feminist movements (she was a member of the NAACP and CORE and continued sparring with the Miss America pageant for years, attacking it for its lack of racial diversity) and was the Paris ambassador for The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy. She was at Sing Sing Prison to protest the executions of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and she studied philosophy at the New School for Social Research. She co-founded an off-Broadway theater in New York City.

She died yesterday in Washington D.C.

The photo at top is Ms Betbeze appearing as Miss America in Pensacola's Fiesta of Five Flags parade in June 1951. (Dig the creepy-looking cop behind her.)

Photo credit: Frank Hardy Sr

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