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.
[1] 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.
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.
Prizes included the honor of being queen of the Azalea Trail Maids, Mobile's official hostesses at special events.
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.
In this decade, two holders of the Junior Miss title would soon lead successful careers while supporting the organization that helped them along the way.
Kentucky Junior Miss and America's Junior Miss 1963 Diane Sawyer continued to support the program as her career in journalism continued, which led to a position at the ABC Television Network program "Good Morning America" and most recently to be the second woman to individually hold the anchor chair nationally for a nightly news program World News on ABC television (Barbara Walters, Elizabeth Vargas and Connie Chung co-anchored with male counterparts).
Alumni from this decade include America's Junior Miss 1973 Linda Rutledge Delbridge of Kansas, who would one day become a computer scientist and executive for IBM.
Georgia Junior Miss 1976 Deborah Norville followed a journalism career path that would earn her the job of hosting the syndicated news program "Inside Edition".
Maryland Junior Miss 1971 was Kathie Lee Gifford, who would one day host a syndicated talk show with TV personality Regis Philbin.
In spite of never advancing to the 1971 finals, Georgia contender Kim Basinger would later have an acting career that would lead her to an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the movie L.A.
Before becoming a Tony Award-winning producer, Bonnie Comley, won the talent competition in the Junior Miss Massachusetts program in 1977.
Among the Junior Miss participants in this decade who would become well known were Georgia's Julie Moran, who would anchor the syndicated TV program "Entertainment Tonight" and 1986 Rhode Island Junior Miss Debra Messing, whose acting career led to earning one of the leading roles in the sitcom "Will & Grace".
In 2005, the AJM Board of Directors' executive committee was unsuccessful at retaining sponsors and a major television network willing enough to broadcast the national finals.
After Mississippi's Junior Miss Kelli Lynn Schutz was chosen and given a $50,000 scholarship, she was not originally scheduled for any of the traditional AJM appearances.
The 2005 finals, hosted by 2000 America's Junior Miss Jesika Henderson and actor Nicky Brown, airing live on the Mobile CBS affiliate WKRG-TV and pre-recorded for PAX TV on June 27 was a celebration of all 48 years of accomplishing a feat that no other organization similar to AJM would attempt: prepare and encourage the lives of young women beginning to enter a new world of possibility.
A group of concerned Junior Miss supporters, under the band of Friends of AJM and with the website saveajm.org, fought for the continuation of the program.