{"id":39101,"date":"2014-12-28T18:28:28","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T18:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39101"},"modified":"2016-11-01T00:30:10","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T00:30:10","slug":"ophelia-devore-mitchell-92-dies-redefined-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39101","title":{"rendered":"Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, 92, Dies; Redefined Beauty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, 92, Dies; Redefined Beauty<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2014-03-13<\/p>\n

Margalit Fox<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nOphelia DeVore-Mitchell
\nCredit MARBL\/Emory University, via Associated Press<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell<\/a>, a former model, agent, charm-school director and newspaper publisher who almost single-handedly opened the modeling profession to African-Americans, and in so doing expanded public understanding of what American beauty looks like, died on Feb. 28 in Manhattan<\/a>. She was 92.<\/p>\n

Her death was announced<\/a> on March 6 on the floor of the House of Representatives by Sanford D. Bishop Jr.<\/a>, Democrat of Georgia<\/a>. At her death, Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell was the publisher emeritus of The Columbus Times<\/em><\/a>, a black newspaper in Columbus, Ga.<\/a>, which she ran from the 1970s until her retirement about five years ago.<\/p>\n

Long before the phrase \u201cBlack is beautiful<\/a>\u201d gained currency in the 1960s, Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell was preaching that ethos by example.<\/p>\n

In New York<\/a> in the 1940s \u2014 an age when modeling schools, and modeling jobs, were overwhelmingly closed to blacks \u2014 she helped start the Grace del Marco Modeling Agency and later founded the Ophelia DeVore School of Self-Development and Modeling. The enterprises, which served minorities, endured for six decades…<\/p>\n

…\u201cBlack has always been beautiful,\u201d Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell once said. \u201cBut you had to hide it to be a model.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the late 1930s, when Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell began her career as one of the first black models in the United States, she found work partly by hiding her own heritage. But in her case, the hiding was done entirely through inadvertence.<\/p>\n

Emma Ophelia DeVore was born on Aug. 12, 1921, in Edgefield, S.C.<\/a>, one of 10 children of John Walter DeVore, a building contractor, and the former Mary Emma Strother, a schoolteacher.<\/p>\n

As a girl, Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell, whose family was of African, Cherokee, French and German descent, was educated in segregated Southern schools; she received additional instruction \u201cin dancing, piano and all the other things in the arts that parents gave you to make you a lady,\u201d as she told Ebony<\/em> magazine in 2012<\/a>…<\/p>\n

…A beauty with wide-set eyes, Ophelia DeVore had begun modeling casually as a teenager. A few years later, seeking professional training, she enrolled in the Vogue School of Modeling in New York.<\/p>\n

It was only toward the end of her studies there, when the school refused admission to another black candidate, that she realized it had mistaken her, with her light skin, for white.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know that they didn\u2019t know,\u201d Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell said in the Ebony<\/em> interview. \u201cI thought they knew what I was.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire obituary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, 92, Dies; Redefined Beauty The New York Times 2014-03-13 Margalit Fox Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell Credit MARBL\/Emory University, via Associated Press Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, a former model, agent, charm-school director and newspaper publisher who almost single-handedly opened the modeling profession to African-Americans, and in so doing expanded public understanding of what American beauty looks like, died […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,8,6462,20,25],"tags":[18897,12464,2640,18896,2327],"class_list":["post-39101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-women","tag-emma-ophelia-devore","tag-margalit-fox","tag-new-york-times","tag-ophelia-devore-mitchell","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46930,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39101\/revisions\/46930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}