America's Junior Miss

Distinguished Young Women, formerly known as America's Junior Miss, is a national non-profit organization that provides scholarship opportunities to high school senior girls. Depending on the schedule of the various state and local programs, young women are eligible during the summer preceding their senior year in high school. This program is designed to provide young women with the opportunity and support needed to succeed before, during, and after attending college. Since its creation in 1958, over 700,000 young ladies have participated in competitions spanning the United States. Contestants compete in the categories of Interview (25%), Scholastics (25%), Talent (20%), Fitness (15%), and Self-Expression (15%). Each state hosts a state program in which the chosen representative advances to the national program, held in the program's birthplace of Mobile, Alabama.

In the late 1920s, Mobile's Junior Chamber of Commerce, known today as the Jaycees, began the earliest form of the Junior Miss program as an annual floral pageant in the spring to encourage participation from residents in local beautification projects, including azalea flowers. The winner of the pageant would eventually choose her successor to carry on the role of representing the annual program: an act similar to what every America's Junior Miss has done a year after winning the title, but it's the judges who decide first.

Shortly after the Second World War, the Junior Chamber changed the program especially for young high school juniors to participate. Prizes included the honor of being queen of the Azalea Trail Maids, Mobile's official hostesses at special events. Before 1957, the Junior Chamber realized that not only were Mobilians participating in their program, so were Mississippi and Florida residents. It was decided that year to make the program national, allowing high school seniors from every state to participate in the renamed America's Junior Miss Pageant. Unlike the Miss America pageant which started as a beauty pageant, but now includes judging on Evening Gown, Private 12 Minute Interview, On Stage Q & A, and Swimsuit, the America's Junior Miss Pageant began not as a beauty pageant but rather as a scholarship program. America's Junior Miss contestants were required to be seniors in high school and were judged on scholastic achievement, creative and performing arts (talent), physical fitness, poise and appearance (evening gowns), and a judges' interview. Bathing suits were never a part of the America's Junior Miss Pageant.

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