Uptown Lexington Christmas parade features beauty queen from North Davidson
North Davidson graduate Nia Franklin is back to lead the pack in the Uptown Lexington Christmas Parade on Monday, December 6 at 6 p.m. on Main Street. She will serve as grand marshal for the parade that will include a host of floats, marching bands, and of course, a visit from Santa.
Franklin currently lives in New York but she calls North Carolina “home.” The Miss America 2019 winner was born in Winston-Salem, and she has lived in the state through graduate school. She earned an undergraduate degree in music composition from East Carolina University and a master’s in music composition from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. A party at East Carolina sparked her interest in opera and studying classical voice. Shortly after, Ms. Franklin was awarded a Kenan Fellowship at New York’s Lincoln Center Education and she subsequently moved to New York City.
“I never considered myself a pageant girl,” she told the Breakfast Club. “I really didn’t think I had the pageant look, especially growing up in North Carolina while I was a minority and I felt out of place.” During Franklin’s freshman year in college, her father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and she became his stem cell donor. This led her to the Miss America Organization. She said she had to find a way to pay for school, so she entered the competition, “but the experience ended up becoming more than just about winning the scholarship money — the experience also offered important lessons about mentorship, leadership and sisterhood.”
In June 2018, Franklin was crowned Miss New York 2018 after moving to the Big Apple. On September 9, 2018, she was crowned Miss America 2019 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by the outgoing Miss America 2018, Cara Mund.
The composer and beauty pageant titleholder toured the nation on a platform of "Advocating for the Arts." With her win, 2019 became the first year all four major United States-based pageants were won by black women. Franklin continues giving back by working on her social impact initiative. Franklin speaks with media, students, school administrators and teachers about the importance of arts education and why it is so vital to a well-rounded education.
Nia added, “I do want to reach out to you women who feel like me. I felt like nobody liked me…I want young girls to have someone to look up to…We need to see that.”
