A Music Major at the University of North Texas Is the First Black Woman to Be Crowned Miss Texas

Shilah Phillips studied voice at Howard University for one year before dropping out of college and moving to Los Angeles with the hope of landing a recording contract. After two years encountering limited success she went home to Texas and enrolled at Collin County Community College in Plano. On the urging of a friend, she entered and won a local beauty pageant, which qualified her to run for Miss Texas.

Phillips won the title of Miss Texas earlier this month and will represent the state in the Miss America contest in early 2007. She is the first African American to win the Miss Texas competition.

The title of Miss Texas comes with a $13,000 scholarship, which at some point in the future Phillips will use to study jazz at the University of North Texas. In the meantime she will appear in a television reality series, Finding Miss America, which will be taped in Los Angeles this fall and shown on Country Music Television.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.