Meet Ms. Black Mississippi: She’s an entrepreneur, veteran and advocate from the MS Coast

Gulfport native Alexis “Lexi” Williams visited Essence Festival in New Orleans in early July. It was her first time at the event.

Essence Fest celebrates a lot of things , chiefly Black female excellence. Williams said she didn’t know what to expect. Certainly, she said, she didn’t think she’d be recognized as one of the celebrities in attendance.

And yet there’s no doubt she was.

Williams is the current reigning queen of Ms. Black Mississippi and was elected as the inaugural Ms. Black Gulf Coast. She’s the owner-operator of her own Gulfport-based fashion store, Aloha-Glamour . Her designs have appeared on runways of New York and Los Angeles fashion weeks. She’s a founder of the Gulf Coast’s Black-owned Business Network . She’s a decorated Iraqi and Afghani veteran. She’s a mother of two and a bereaved mother of one. She’s an advocate for her community, her children and other mothers mourning children they’ve lost too soon.

Williams is also on the campaign for Ms. Black USA. She’s crowdfunding the money to make the flight and lodging for the televised competition in Washington, D.C., to compete and represent her home state on the national stage. Williams intends to be there whether she raises the money or not, she said.

She’s on a mission to be Mississippi’s first Black queen to place in the top 12. Nothing’s going to stop her from trying, she says: Not a lack of money. Not a lack of confidence.

“I’m used to making history,” Williams said. She’s 40 years old. And she loves a little drama, she said.

‘Redefining beauty’

Williams grew up watching televised beauty pageants. She loved the shows, she said, watching contestants showing off their wit and modeling their finest gowns.

She never competed growing up. Almost none of the contestants on TV looked like her, she said, so it wasn’t something she thought to aspire toward.

The first Black woman to win the title of Miss Mississippi in the Miss USA Pageant (different from Miss Black USA) was Toni Deniece Seawright in 1987. That was a big deal in Williams’ development. It planted a thought she’d revisit over 30 years later.

Around a year ago, she joined the campaign for her first pageant — Ms. Black USA. Her journey began after seeing an ad on Facebook.

Ms. Black Gulf Coast is a relatively new title in the Ms. Black USA Pageant. She ran and won as its first-ever title holder. The plan, Williams said, was to campaign alongside her daughter, Laila, who’d just graduated from high school. She said they could support each other, running parallel in different age brackets, as a last hurrah before her daughter went on to college.

Williams’ daughter petered out, but not for a lack of experience; her daughter models the apparel sold at Aloha-Glamour and has strutted a number of national-scale runways. Williams said she just got lazy.

A few months after winning the Gulf Coast pageant, she inherited the Ms. Black Mississippi title after the other title-elects were unable to fulfill their duties, she said.

By February 2024, Gulfport Mayor Billy Hewes declared in an official mayoral proclamation honoring a day for her, celebrating Williams’ title winning as prestigious and culturally significant to the Coast.

“It amazes me. It almost brings tears to my eyes when I see Black and Brown girls who look different,” Williams said of the Ms. Black USA pageant. “If they have dreads, if they have braces, if they’re a bit on the chubby side like I am. I feel like I’m redefining beauty and also redefining what pageants look like.”

By the end of July, Williams will be in Washington, D.C., to compete for nationals. She’s taking walking and speaking lessons in preparation. She’s preparing with significantly less time than other contenders, she said, since she inherited the state title later than most other candidates.

Why Ms. Black Mississippi matters

“What about Ms. White Mississippi?” It’s one of the most common questions Williams is asked. Sometimes it’s a leading question. Sometimes it’s from a place of real curiosity.

It’s true that the Ms. USA Pageant allows contestants of all backgrounds to compete, she said. But that pageant predates Ms. Black USA by about 30 years and developed its own history and traditions, she said.

“Having a dedicated system like Ms. Black USA is essential because it ensures representation and highlights the specific issues and stories within the Black community,” Williams said. “This pageant system isn’t to exclude us or segregate us. It is actually to include us in conversations and to show other Black and Brown girls that you can be a queen because representation matters. We can’t aspire to be something that we’ve never seen.”

The Ms. Black USA pageant system aims to bring together Black women to a space where their demographic traditionally lacks representation en masse. Having role models can inspire and motivate future generations, Williams said.

Remembering Lauren Taylor

Williams was shipped off to her duties with the U.S. Air Force the day after her high school graduation, she said. After her service in the Middle East, she was stationed in Hawaii.

She gave birth to a daughter, Lauren Taylor, in 2015 while stationed in Hawaii. Williams’ newborn daughter died from medical complications shortly after the birth.

Her divorce was finalized by the end of the year. She moved with her two other children back to the Coast, now to Keesler Air Force Base. She retired from the air force in 2019.

“I had no way to grieve. I was just going through the motions of life,” Williams said.

She moved two doors down from her parents in Gulfport. She was prone to sudden crying episodes for a while after, she said, but her parents’ support was just a few doors down.

Williams carries Lauren Taylor’s legacy with her when she takes the stage at pageants. She advocates a platform of child loss awareness, inspired by her daughter.

Around one in four pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage. Williams said that statistic is even worse for Black families.

“I feel like it’s important to create safe spaces, for women of color particularly, because I didn’t have that,” Williams said. “When I was going through my loss and grief, there were no safe spaces for me.”

Afrowaiian accessories and apparel

Williams opened Aloha-Glamour one year after her daughter’s death. She started the brand as a way to occupy her attention and remember her passed daughter, she said.

The store used to have a physical location in Gulfport’s Premium Outlet but has since moved online only. She said patrons visiting the store described it as culturally vibrant and colorful, apart from all the other stores in the mall.

Aloha-Glamour sells clothing, jewelry, handbags and accessories produced, by hand, from Ghanan and Hawaiian artisans. Items’ designs are a collaborative effort between Williams herself and the local artists. She has dubbed her brand’s style as “Afrowaiian.”

Williams said it’s important to support the Ghanan artisans. Her partners are based in the country’s capital city of Accra. She tries visiting them once a year. Lots of workers there make and survive on less than 70 dollars a month. For that reason, Williams said, she always buys orders from her partners whether she’s out of stock or not. She similarly supports artisans based in Honolulu.

Aside from fashion weeks in cities across America, her designs have appeared on the covers of Asian magazines; Williams’ face has also been on the covers of local magazines on the Gulf Coast.

When she moved back to the Coast and started Aloha-Glamour, she founded a community for Black-owned businesses, the Mississippi Gulf Coast Black Owned Business Network. The intent, she said, was to provide a gathering place for Black-owned businesses in a place where networking was needlessly difficult.

Onto the nationals

Ms. Black USA will be televised on FOX Soul and takes place between July 30 and August 5. The winner will receive prizes valued at $100,000, according to the pageant .

Williams has the goal of raising $5,000 to partially fund the costs of attending the national competition. Donations can be made to her by her gofundme .

“I want my legacy to be that I’ve invested in people,” Williams said. “And that I’ve created safe spaces.”