Iman in a 1976 Avon advertisement. She is wearing a dress by Giorgio Sant’ Angelo.
Sam Cooke in an advertisement for L&M cigarettes that appeared in the April 1964 issue of Ebony.
Pioneering model Helen Williams, in a 1960s Avon cosmetics advertisement.
A 1964 advertisement for Coca-Cola that appeared in Ebony magazine.
Carmen de Lavallade in a 1967 advertisement for Coca Cola.
Judy Pace in a 1967 advertisement for Ultra Sheen.
A 1974 Fashion Fair ad featuring Pal Henry, a woman who describes leaving her nursing career behind to go back to modeling because “one medic in the family was quite enough.” Let’s hope that worked out for her in the long run…
A 1961 Dixie Peach advertisement that appeared in Ebony featuring Eileen Mills, Director “of the glamorous Negro cover girls at New York’s leading agency for colored models.”
Pioneering model Helen Williams, hands down, the most photographed Black model of the 1950s and 1960s, in a 1960s Kodak advertisement.
A 1969 Revlon ‘Colorsilk’ advertisement.
Earle Hyman, the Shakespearean actor best known to most as “Grandpa Huxtable” in a 1959 Smirnoff vodka ad.
Darnella Thomas in one of her groundbreaking ads from the legendary Charlie fragrance campaign in the 1970s.
From Black and Beautiful: How Women of Color Changed the Fashion Industry by former Ford model Barbara Summers
Although Darnella shot at least four ads for the Charlie campaign, she was not signed to a contract. “Every time I did a shoot for them I would get paid whatever the day rate was; it was never a contract. A contract would have entailed them giving me the television commercials, which is what I really wanted. I know for a for a fact that the reason I did the second, third, and fourth ads was because they got a lot of letters about me. I wouldn’t have continued to do them if they weren’t successful. It was interesting, too, that I didn’t see some of the ads. When you photographed, you shot two or three ads. I don’t know how many they used, or where. The ads ran in some parts of Africa and Latin America, but they didn’t tell me that. I wasn’t supposed to know obviously. Who thought that far? I was only looking for Essence, you know? But they used my ad in Vogue and Glamour also.
