The inaugural Miss Juneteenth Minnesota State Pageant has crowned its first queens.
The new pageant is a nonprofit organization that holds a vision of inspiring women of color while creating a platform that provides its Black contestants with educational, networking and career opportunities.
The pageant also celebrated Juneteenth with a theme of “Rediscovering Our Culture and Redefining Our Freedom.”
“We look forward to working with these dynamic and talented young ladies during their reign. [The pageant] began as a vision that became reality beyond what I could have imagined. And it was due to the support from their families and the community pulling together,” said Angel T. Jones, chief executive officer and founder of the pageant. “The Miss Juneteenth contestants represent the promise and hope for the future.”
Five Miss Juneteenth queens were crowned across five different age divisions for 2024:
• Division one (ages 6-9) – Ceray’na Alexander of North Minneapolis
• Division two (ages 10-13) – LaMariya Swain of Brooklyn Park
• Division three (ages 14-18) – Kamira Nelson of North Minneapolis
• Division four (ages 19-24) – Breona Maynard of North Minneapolis
• Division five (ages 25-30) – Khadijah Lamah of St. Louis Park
Contestants and more than 300 family and community members attended the June 8 event, which was hosted at Hamline University’s Sundin Music Hall in St. Paul. An awards ceremony and dinner followed at Cedars Hall in Northeast Minneapolis.
Swain, who lives in Brooklyn Park and recently graduated from the K-8 Loveworks Academy for Visual and Performing Arts in Minneapolis, said it was exciting to take part in the pageant in front of her family and friends. She plans to enroll at Maple Grove Senior High School this fall.
As part of the application process, Swain wrote an essay reflecting on what she hoped to get out of the pageant.
“It was one of the decisions I made where I wasn’t trying to make anyone else happy. I wanted to do it for me and for my own confidence,” she said. “I wanted to do it to prove to myself that I was confident and being Black was an honor. It is an honor.”
The Junior Miss Juneteenth said she encourages other girls her age to “be your own influencer.”
“Follow your own dreams, find your own group and just be yourself,” she said.
In the year ahead as queen, Swain said she plans to show up for her community by helping at local homeless shelters.
Lamah, a St. Louis Park resident who grew up in Brooklyn Center and graduated from to Osseo High School, said she was inspired to take part in the pageant because of its focus on character and that it “celebrates what beauty looks like in every shape, every form.”
In addition to the essay, evening gown, onstage question and answer and stage presence categories, contestants also competed for scholarships and awards.
For her essay, Lamah focused on what it means to have an impact on Black girls and women.
“Being a pageant queen or a title holder is so much more about the people you serve than the crown and the sash,” she said. “You really have to sacrifice a lot of your wants or desires or things you may think you want or desire for the greater good of the people you serve. It truly is about discipline. It’s about determination. It’s about putting yourself last ... and putting your community first.”
Lamah also wrote about the inspiring women in her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta. She joined while attending Virginia State University, a historically Black college.
Lamah said she hopes to be just as inspiring to Black girls in the community in her role as a newly crowned Miss Juneteenth.
“Celebrate what makes you different,” she said. “For a very long time, up until adulthood, I ran and tried to hide what made me different from other people and what truly set me apart. And it took for me to understand that my power lies in the differences that I have. That’s truly where my uniqueness and my talents and my gifts lie. When I tapped into that is when I truly started to see power in myself and doors started to open for me and I was able to accept myself.”
To learn more about the Miss Juneteenth Minnesota State Pageant, visit missjuneteenthmn.org.
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