Ophelia DeVore

Ophelia DeVore was born on the twelfth of August 1922 at Edgefield, South Carolina, the daughter of John DeVore — a Black-American carpenter of the South Carolina Black-and-Cherokee community — and Mary Strother DeVore. She was raised at the family relocation to New York in 1934 in the principal post-Great-Migration Harlem community.

She was hired at fifteen in 1937 as a junior fashion model at the principal John Powers Agency at New York — at a period in which she passed as white at the principal Powers Agency professional bookings of the late-1930s and early-1940s mainstream American fashion-modeling tradition.

She enrolled at New York University at New York in 1942 and studied marketing and business management — and completed the bachelor's degree in marketing in 1946.

She co-founded the principal Grace Del Marco Model Agency at New York in 1946 — the principal first Black-American-owned fashion-model agency in the United States — alongside the principal Black-American businesswoman Mary Louise Yarbrough and the principal Black-American fashion designer Doreen Macsherry.

She founded the principal Ophelia DeVore Charm School at New York in 1946 — the principal first Black-American-owned charm-and-self-improvement school for Black-American young women of the principal post-Second-World-War period — and operated the principal DeVore Charm School from 1946 to 1980.

She was the principal pioneer of the principal Black-American model-agency tradition of the post-Second-World-War period — at a period in which the principal American model-agency tradition was overwhelmingly closed to Black-American models.

Her principal DeVore Charm School graduates across the principal post-1946 period included the principal Black-American fashion models and entertainment personalities Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson, Helen Williams (placed in this archive), Naomi Sims (placed in this archive), Eartha Kitt, and Beverly Johnson.

She relocated the principal DeVore Charm School and the principal Grace Del Marco Model Agency to Atlanta in 1980 — and operated the principal Atlanta charm-and-modeling programmes from 1980 to her retirement in 2000.

She acquired in 1991 the principal Columbus Times newspaper at Columbus, Georgia — the principal Black-American weekly newspaper of the principal post-1959 Columbus Black community — and was the principal Columbus Times publisher from 1991 to 2014.

She was the principal subject of the principal Spelman College 2010 special exhibition on the principal Black-American model-agency tradition of the post-Second-World-War period.

She died at Manhattan, New York on the twenty-eighth of February 2014 of complications of a long illness, at ninety-one.

She is honored here as the principal pioneer of the Black-American model-agency tradition.