100 Miss Johnson C. Smiths

There was no crown at first. The Bull — the University yearbook — names Valinda Wagner as sponsor of the Smith–Virginia State football game, the first documented queen in the line. By 1929 there were three at once: Vivienne Scott for football, Dorothy Fletcher for basketball, Elnora Owens for baseball, listed across pages 109 to 111 of The Bull. One young woman for each sport, chosen to represent it.

"Sponsor" gave way to "Miss Smith," and then to "Miss Johnson C. Smith" — one woman a year, named before the Homecoming football game. Through the 1940s the President of the University crowned her on the field at halftime, in front of everyone. Eight reigns from this stretch still have no surviving record of who wore the crown. 

The crowning moved off the field and became the centerpiece of the whole week — Friday evening, the night before the game, staged in Biddle Hall. It was deliberately modeled on the crowning of a British queen: a processional, a court, a throne. That was the shape of it until the new gymnasium opened in 1961 and the ceremony moved in.

By 1961 more than thirty women had worn the crown, and the University set out to bring all of them back at once — the first attempt to gather the queens in one room and treat the line itself as something worth honoring. Sixty-five years later, we are doing it again!

In 1972 the coronation was rewritten — literally. The script was written in Swahili and the British staging was replaced with an African motif. Through the decade the queen was carried in, surrounded by Egyptian and other African imagery. The Archives are direct about why: Homecoming changed in the 1970s to reflect the new, confident Black student. Same crown, entirely different meaning.

Pamela Young is crowned the first student parent to hold the title. The crown stops being something you have to be unencumbered to wear. Tanoia L. Hill follows in 2008–09, and goes on to Miss CIAA.

Rolanda Sue reigns the year Robert Butts is named the first Mister Johnson C. Smith University. After eighty-four years the title finally has a companion.

Jessica McDonald is crowned the first adult learner ever to hold the title. Nearly a century in, the crown stops belonging only to the traditional-age student. Every Golden Bull who came to this University later than expected, with a job and a family and a longer road, has a queen in the line now.

Jaiden Isome becomes the first queen to reign consecutively all four years — a record nobody in the previous ninety-eight had set.

Ninety-nine reigns after Valinda Wagner's name appeared in The Bull, Jaivyn Beauford is crowned the Centennial Queen — the 100th Miss Johnson C. Smith University — in Brayboy Gymnasium. Every woman on this page is standing behind her.