When judges announced that Alicia Diamond as winner of the 2018 Ms. Virginia Senior America pageant, black women from the neighboring Washington D.C. Senior America delegation, celebrated, while the bleached blonde Virginia contestants stood aghast. The woman who had travelled 6 hours from Southwest Virginia, arriving without sprayed hair and painted fingernails, and who had been discounted as a viable contestant  commanded the stage with talent, grace and natural elegance.  Virginia's historically white organization was unnerved and when  D.C. women celebrated Alicia's coronation, white women in Virginia's organization  drew a line in the sand.

 

Virginia Senior America's newly appointed director,  who identified as a Daughter of the Confederacy,  had hand picked her candidates for queenship and  refused  to  support the  newly crowned queen.  Within 24 hour a relentless campaign of slander, harassment, disability discrimination and obstructionism reared its ugly head in an effort to unseat the reigning queen. With the  focus and inner strength drawn from her  training as an operatic soprano and decades as an equestrianne, 

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Faced with incredible obstacles and insidious attempts at defamation, Alicia summons the determination,  humor, power, integrity, curiosity, artistry and courage within herself to fight for her title and proves her talent, and grace at the 2018 Senior America National Pageant.

 

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