NEW YORK — Naomi Sims, whose 1968 Ladies' Home Journal cover shot was a breakthrough for black fashion models, has died. She was 61.
Sims, said by some to be the first black supermodel, died Saturday of breast cancer in Newark, N.J., said her brother-in-law Alexander Erwiah, the president of Naomi Sims Beauty Products. It had been decades since she left the runway to become an author and launch her own beauty empire.
Sims attained success at the same time that the "Black is Beautiful" movement was taking hold, and her accomplishments as a barrier-breaking African-American model helped pave the way for the black runway stars of the 1970s, including Pat Cleveland, Alva Chinn and Beverly Johnson.
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