My great, great grandma, She was a slave.

She was sold for a bale of cotton.

I see the legacy that my great grandma left to my grandmother and to my grandmother and to my mom.

If they were to me now, I know they would be pleased in what I'm doing for our community.

These young ladies they...

They are vying for the scholarship for the Miss Juneteenth Scholarship to help them go to school.

The main thing for our scholarship is education.

So we want to help these young ladies go to college.

This is not a beauty pageant.

We are a scholarship pageant.

So all their funds that they raise goes to their scholarship.

I want these young ladies to feel good about themselves.

I want them to be inspired.

I want them to be encouraged to go to school, go beyond here, go beyond high school and get an education so they can get those jobs that everybody said that they're not capable of getting.

I think it really helped me build my character as a person, and it made me someone that makes like young black girls, like proud and believe that they can do whatever they want.

And I feel like handing out the crown now It's like I still have what I learned and I can still take that with me a title or not.

And I'm so excited for the next girl to grow as well and just be like her confident self.

One of the things that had like a lot of little kids come up to me and be like, ‘Oh my God, I look up to you.

I was like, oh my God, that's such an honor to know that, you know, people strive to, like, be someone like me.

And it's just like, I want to let people know that it is possible, like not only to look up to me, but also to act on it and be someone that they can be proud of.

These girls leave out of here with a lot of a lot of positivity.

They leave out of here with a lot of energy because I'm telling you, we affirm to them every time they come, ‘You are beautiful.

You are who you are, you're who God made you.

And that's enough.

I mean, I have not seen one girl leave this pageant with low self-esteem at all.

They're totally different when they leave the pageant.

They're totally different.

And we love to see it.

I usually am shy around people that, you know, I'm just meeting this year or getting to know.

But this helped me kind of break out of my shell and be a little bit more confident around those I don't know.

Usually whenever I walk in a room, I always try to like, stay in the back.

you know, not be known.

But now when I walk into the room Im like, “Take a look at me, like, Im special.

I'm here.

You know, I'm saying I'm, like, deserving of the space that I'm given.

I just felt a lot of confidence flow through my body, that I was just, you know, better than what I used to think that I was.

In freshman and sophomore year.

I did not think that I was anything.

But now I really feel like I am worth something.

And from this pageant, I think I learned.

A lot of people, believe it or not still dont know what Juneteenth is and why it's important for us to celebrate it.

So whenever we have an opportunity, we go and we talk about it because it's a celebration of freedom.

I know a lot of people celebrate Lincoln, and that's a good thing.

But it's also like you have to know the struggles that it took to actually get his act into action.

And that's what Juneteenth represents.

Knowing that I'm able to carry this title around, tell people about Juneteenth, and now I'm like, I represent Miss Juneteenth.

I have to be resilient.

I have to like, encourage people and just let them know that they can get through this because like being black we have a history of resilience and just perseverance that I just want to carry and let people know, you got this, you can do this.

When little girls see her with that crown on, they're like in awe of her because they see someone that looks like them.

And it's like, if she can do it, I can do it.

So that's why that's so important, I think, for us to have that representation.