Kendall Turner crowned 44th Miss Unity

The contestants pose for photos with their awards at the end of the Miss Unity Scholarship Pageant. The pageant’s 2021 Miss Unity is junior architecture major Kendall Turner (seated in the middle) (Ashley Ankapong/The Black Explosion)

Kendall Turner was crowned Miss Unity at Nyumburu’s 44th annual Miss Unity Scholarship Pageant on Sunday at STAMP Student Union’s Hoff Theater. The event was hosted by Miss Unity 2013-2014 Cathryn Paul and Miss University of Maryland Eastern Shore 2019-2020. Sarah Adewumi.

The Washington, D.C. native is a junior architecture major who is not new to the annual pageant. Turner was the 1st runner-up winner in last year’s Miss Unity Pageant, but she came back to claim the crown.

”I think that the biggest aspect that I took away from this is that you have to push yourself and really, really just shoot for gold,” Turner said.

For this year’s pageant, Turner’s platform was to boost women in the STEM field as she cites going through class and her office seeing mostly men. She has never performed spoken word before but was awarded “best talent” for her stunning spoken word performance, reciting Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise.” 

“It was a challenge for me but I tapped into my acting skills and I was able to be Miss Maya for a minute and I was really proud of the results,” said Turner.

The Miss Unity Pageant started back in the early 1980s as Miss Black Homecoming Queen. The event got its official name change in 2003 to incorporate an inclusive vision of the program’s focus, according to the program booklet of Sunday's event. The purpose of Miss Unity Pageant is “to promote unity among students and student groups, to promote cultural awareness and appreciation of the contributions and achievement of all women.”

Sophomore hearing and speech sciences major Sierra Hall was the first runner-up winner of the pageant. She says that meeting the other contestants was the best part of her experience.

“Just seeing that I wasn’t alone with my fear of being in public and on the stage doing this stuff,'' Hall said, “Everyone was in my shoes, so we all kind of fought together, moved together and learned together.”