William H. Kelly III
Editor-in-Chief
Jackson State University’s own Robin Y. Jackson represented Mississippi in the 48th Annual National Miss Black America Pageant.
Jackson, a senior political science major from Jackson, Miss., placed 2nd place in the overall pageant and won the Miss Positivity/Congeniality Award.
“It feels really awesome to have made it through the pageant world, to have really started this journey with competitiveness with voting and to actually be doing pageantry is a big step for me. Hearing second runner-up was a shock because I didn’t expect it, I competed against some wonderful girls that have very very wonderful talents,” said Jackson.
Jackson said that her motivation comes from the African-American girls in her community.
“The motivation for so long has been the experience that I get from hearing young girls say how much I inspire them. Being able to be an inspiration to other young women is like the energy to my day,” said Jackson.
She added: “Them saying that I really adore what you are doing, or that they appreciate what I am doing, or how I am doing it with natural hair, or how I am being as natural as possible with competing with pageants, they say that they enjoy that and they are inspired by that which makes them inspired to do things inside of their life natural and unapologetically them.”
Jackson stated that pageantry is not all about the appearance.
“My biggest preparation for pageants is mental preparation. A lot of people think that it is all about looking good, but it is not. It is really about the mindset you have taking it into pageantry because what you have to understand is that it takes a strong type of woman to be able to try to compete against a whole lot of other women at one time and not to lose yourself,” said Jackson. “You have to be confident into who you are when you see all of these other women who have characteristics that you might be insecure about, so I focus on who Robin is and what Robin wants to bring to that competition.”
Taking what some would say was a risky approach with her appearance, Jackson competed in the pageant with natural hair.
“I wanted to embrace my natural hair because both of my sisters are natural. Before I actually took the journey of being natural, my little sisters did, so I wanted to be able to do something to inspire them and they are rocking it, well let me take it to another level, let me show these people nationally we got this, we really can rock our natural hair and get people attention,” said Jackson. “People were so shocked that I was out there with my natural hair and I never put on a weave. I never curled it any type of way. I went out there strictly how it comes out of my head.”
Much to her surprise, Jackson said the two things that the judges most liked about her were her country accent and her small afro.
“That was my whole thing while I was there, was that I was this country girl from Mississippi with no hair,” said Jackson.
Jackson currently has two opportunities to visit New York from Sept. 15-18, as well as upcoming tours in Atlanta, Mississippi, and Louisiana for motivational speaking to young girls. Along with that, Jackson will be going back to Philadelphia to mentor young girls.
When asked what advice she would give young black pageant girls who want to embrace their natural hair but are afraid to do so, she gave the following words of encouragement.
“People will only accept you by what you put out. If you put out a positive natural image, then that’s what they’re going to take. If you’re powerful in that and if you’re sure that that’s what you want to do then do it. Can’t nobody stop you.”
Kennedy Jones contributed to this story.
