WS Chronicle

(Madison Gibbs competes.)

Madison Gibbs has never been what she calls a “pageant girl.” In fact, she’s participated in only four. As it turns out, she’s pretty good at it. In December, she was crowned Miss Black North Carolina USA, after competing in the scholarship pageant at the Garner (N.C.) Performing Arts Center.

“I didn’t think I was going to win,” she said. “I don’t like to pump myself up in my head. I try to remain calm and focus on what I am doing. I don’t like to focus on what anyone else is doing.”

Gibbs, 21, participated in the scholarship pageant after being crowned Miss Black Piedmont USA. Before that title, she participated in the first Mister and Miss A&T pageant, in which she was first runner up. As a high school senior, she was crowned Miss Dudley (High School).

“In high school, when I competed, I cried so much and said I never wanted to do another pageant in my life,” she said.

Gibbs is now poised to represent her home state in the Miss Black USA scholarship pageant in August.
“Whether I win or not, I think the next one is going to be my last one,” she said.

In addition to winning it all at the state level, she also placed first in the categories of evening wear, athletic wear and talent, an area she struggled with in previous competitions.

“For my first pageant, I did a spoken word piece, and that is really hard to pull off. Then I did a liturgical dance set to Maya Angelou’s ‘And Still I Rise,’” Gibbs said. “This time I said, ‘I need to do something I know how to do and that I’m good at.’”

This time around, Gibbs, a former auxiliary dancer with Golden Delight, leaned on friend and fellow Aggie Deraymes Harris to choreograph an upbeat contemporary dance set to Jessie J’s “Burnin’ Up.”
Now that she’s conquered the talent category, she’s ready to move forward and continue the work that brings her joy.

“The work in the community and volunteering I do – it kind of counts toward the pageant, but it’s not for the pageant. It’s just what I do,” she said

Gibbs’ platform is Project RSVP: Reaching our Society through Virtue and Public Service. It allows her to continue her public service in the Piedmont Triad and now extend her efforts statewide via her new position.

“A lot of people don’t have the advantages I have of being a part of the A&T network and being connected to other HBCUs and to Greek life,” she said. “These are all avenues I can use to connect with other people who want to do great things in their communities just like I do.”

Gibbs is a political science major, and she has a family connection to A&T. She’s a granddaughter of former A&T President Warmoth T. Gibbs, namesake of Gibbs Hall.

She’s a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. and Delta GEMS (Growing and Empowering Myself Successfully). She is also a Wabash-Provost Scholar and a member of Toastmasters, A&T Mock Trial Society, Model UN and the Student Union Advisory Board.

With just one semester until graduation, she has her sights set on attending law school and raising the necessary funds to get to the national competition in Washington in August.

“Almost as soon as I won, it was like people came running to me and telling me to start thinking of fundraising ideas,” she said.

While she will have some help, Gibbs has been tasked with raising at least $3,500 for expenses, so she started a GoFundMe page, http://www.gofundme.com/missblackncusa15.

“After winning and seeing how my hard work paid off, I realized that if I was afforded some of the opportunities that I wanted before, I wouldn’t have received what I have now. Ultimately, I was blessed with bigger and better and because of this I want to do everything I can under my title to have an impact,” she said. “I will need an enormous amount of support on this journey to bring the crown home.”