Title: American Vogue's first black cover girl - BBC News
Headings: American Vogue's first black cover girl
American Vogue's first black cover girl
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Content: American Vogue's first black cover girl - BBC News
American Vogue's first black cover girl
By Claire Bowes
BBC World Service
Published
31 July 2014
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Model agents told her she'd never make it, hairdressers refused to touch her hair and Kodak didn't even make film that could cope with her skin tone, but somehow 40 years ago Beverly Johnson became the first black woman on the cover of American Vogue. "You mean there's never been a woman of colour on the cover of Vogue magazine? Are you kidding me? We're in the 1970s." When Beverly Johnson found out that she'd made the August 1974 cover of the fashion bible she was ecstatic - but also outraged to discover she was breaking a racial taboo for the first time. At 21, she'd only been modelling for a couple of years and didn't know that her goal - to be on Vogue's front cover - would put her in the history books. When the picture hit the newsstands - with Johnson, her hair swept back, wearing an unseasonably warm angora cardigan and Bulgari diamond loop earrings - she started getting calls from newspapers and magazines from all over the world. "That's when I knew it was a big deal, when people told me it was a big deal," she says. "I was interviewed by people from Africa and from Europe. They were saying, 'It's about time that America woke up!'