Pageant News Bureau - Monica Pang 2

P a g e a n t N e w s B u r e a u

The biracial belle

Photos by Joe Whiteko / PNB

In all the lively history of the Miss America Pageant, only one Georgian has ever won the crown. It was the 1953 pageant (held in 1952), in the era before Miss America was televised. The Georgian who won was named Neva Jane Langley.

The South was so different then. Georgia, like the rest of Dixie, was the land of Jim Crow. Whites ran everything, and the large black minority was denied full legal rights. Asians in Georgia were about as scarce as avalanches. You could have fit all the state's people of Asian descent into a high school gym.

Today's Miss Georgia is Monica Pang. Her mom is a blonde from Middle Georgia, a daughter of the Old South. Her dad is ethnic Chinese, from Malaysia. Ms. Pang succeeded a Miss Georgia who happens to be black. And it's all very normal, not controversial at all.

This is progress -- the kind of thing most Georgians could not have imagined back in the early '50s. The South, which so often was derided as a backwater -- and which shamed itself with segregation -- is now a cosmopolitan place, a crossroads of the world.

People can change. Regions can change. Nations can change. Pageants can certainly change. And Georgia can win.

PNB is proud of Monica Pang. She's a friend of long standing. And her life is what today's America is all about.

P a g e a n t N e w s B u r e a u