By: Erica Taylor, The Tom Joyner Morning Show
Model and designer Madame Emma Ophelia Devore helped establish America's first modeling agency for women of color.
Model and designer Madame Emma Ophelia Devore, the first mixed-race supermodel in America, helped to establish The Grace Del Marco Agency, the first modeling agency for women of color in the United States.
Devore was born in Edgefield, South Carolina to a black Indian mother and German and black father. Her parents traveled often because her father was a road contractor, and her mother was an etiquette teacher and a musician. By age 16, Devore took work as a model, passing as Norwegian on European runways.
After attending NYU, Devore became an expert in mathematics, public relations and fashion. By the 1940s, she had birthed five children with her first husband, Harold Carter. Then in 1946, Devore broke barriers by becoming the first woman of color to integrate the Vogue School of Modeling.
Tired of the few options for black women in fashion, she turned her efforts to building a place that would give people of color an option in the racist fashion world. Through Madame Ophelia’s Grace Del Marco agency, big stars like Diahann Carroll, Helen Williams, Cicely Tyson, Richard Roundtree, Gail Fisher and Susan Taylor found opportunity.
Taking on shows in churches, colleges and hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria, Devore’s agency would thrive as far away as the Parisian fashion scene. Her work was so intense, it caused her to suffer a heart attack while still in her 20s. But determined, she would eventually add publisher of the fashion section in the Pittsburgh Courier, business executive of Devore Carter Communications, and television producer of "The Ophelia Devore Show" to her job descriptions.
Devore was featured in the historic publication “I Dream a World” by Brian Lanker and has received over 200 awards and honors.
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