Black History Month Recognition: Celebrating Tracey 'Africa' Norman, Pioneering Transgender Model

Tracey "Africa" Norman broke ground the fashion industry didn't even know was being broken. In the 1970s she worked as one of the first transgender models in the business, booking mainstream jobs at a time when being known as trans could end everything. For Black History Month, hers is a story worth telling in full.

She started in Newark, working local shows. Money was short — Norman and her friends struggled — but she kept at it, and the work carried her to The Palace in Paris, where she performed for a stretch, including time in a Supremes impersonation group. Then came a contract with Balenciaga in Paris. That's how her early career went: no shortcuts, one hard-won booking after the next.​

The break came when photographer Irving Penn spotted her, which led to her signing with Zoli, then one of New York City's top modeling agencies. The clients followed: designer Patrick Kelly, wig master Andre Douglas, Avon, Clairol, Ultra Sheen cosmetics. In the 1970s, Norman became the first African-American transgender woman to appear on a Clairol box — her face in millions of homes, years before the public knew what that image meant for trans visibility.​

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Then the industry learned she was trans, and the work stopped. Not because her skill declined — because of who she was. Her influence didn't stop with the bookings, though. She became a role model for the trans women who came after her, Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, and Carmen Carrera among them. She took the blow and stayed standing.​​

And the story didn't end there. A 2015 feature in New York Magazine put her name back in circulation, and Clairol came calling again — this time with a campaign built around her story and the confidence that comes from living as yourself. In 2016, Norman and Geena Rocero became among the first openly transgender models on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. The industry that had dropped her put her back on its covers, some forty years on.​​

Norman didn't set out to be a symbol. She set out to model, and she was good at it — good enough that fashion took her back once it finally caught up to her. This Black History Month, remember the name: Tracey "Africa" Norman, who did it first and outlasted the people who tried to erase her.