The Maybelline Story

1959 Maybelline Ad pays tribute to a Century of Black Life, History and Culture

By Sharrie Williams · Written February 2015 · 2 min read

Selma featured and won the 2015 Academy Award for best song… “Glory.” I think my Great uncle, Tom Lyle Williams would be proud to have played a part of Black History. Maybelline was the first American Cosmetic Company in history to feature a black model in an ad in 1959.


Tom Lyle Williams, contracted Dorothea Towles Church, in 1959. She was the first Black Maybelline model to appear in Ebony Magazine.

1959 Maybelline Ad pays tribute to a Century of Black Life, History and Culture


This ad features Dorothea Towles Church, with, Magic Mascara, Maybelline’s first wand mascara, and a new line of products, in 1959.

1959 Maybelline Ad pays tribute to a Century of Black Life, History and Culture

Dorothea Towles Church, the first successful black model in Paris, who discovered personal liberation on the runways of Christian Dior and Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1950s,

1959 Maybelline Ad pays tribute to a Century of Black Life, History and Culture



1959 Maybelline Ad pays tribute to a Century of Black Life, History and Culture


When it comes to beauty, color doesn’t matter.

1959 Maybelline Ad pays tribute to a Century of Black Life, History and Culture
Claudinette Fouchard
Ebony captured the No. 1 spot as the most widely

 circulated and most popular Black magazine, a

 position it has been able to maintain for 50

 consecutive years.



1959 Maybelline Ad pays tribute to a Century of Black Life, History and Culture
Claudinette Fouchard the first Haitian to compete in

 Miss World. Miss Haiti, is crowned Reine Mondiale

 du Sucre 1960 by Miss International 1960,

 Stella Marquez of Colombia.

.

1959 Maybelline Ad pays tribute to a Century of Black Life, History and Culture


“Ebony,” says Publisher John H. Johnson, “was founded to project all dimension of the Black personality in a world saturated with stereotypes. 

I remember being with my family, at my great uncle Tom Lyle’s, home in Bel Air, and noticing an Ebony Magazine in the pile of magazines next to his chair. I’d seen the pile from around the world, with Maybelline ad’s in them, all my life, but never saw a magazine like this one. He opened a page to a Maybelline ad, featuring an African American, Maybelline model, and said, isn’t she gorgeous.


Coming soon · Next from Sharrie Williams

Maybe She’s Born With It

The next chapter of the Maybelline family story. Get a text the day it’s out.

Where it began: The Maybelline Story — Amazon · Ebook · Signed copy