Marjorie
Vincent
MISS ILLINOIS 1990 | MISS AMERICA 1991
Majorie Vincent-Tripp was the 4th African-American to be crowned the title of Miss America.
Vincent’s parents, Lucien and Florence Vincent of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti migrated to the United States in the early 1960s; Marjorie was the first of their children to be born in the United States. She grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, attending Catholic school and taking ballet and piano lessons. Vincent entered DePaul
University as a music major, switching to business in junior year and graduating in 1988.
After two unsuccessful pageant tries, she won Miss Illinois. At the Miss America pageant, she performed the Fantaisie-Impromptu (Op. posth.66) by Chopin. Vincent, who already had two years in law school at Duke University before becoming Miss America, changed her goal from international law to television journalism, becoming a news anchor at WGBC in Meridian, Mississippi in October 1993. She later worked at WHOI in Peoria, Illinois, and the Ohio News Network in Columbus, Ohio, for the next six-plus years.
In 2008, Vincent began work to complete her law degree at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, Florida. She is currently the Assistant Attorney General for the state of Florida.
