Black History

#Black Girl M-A-G-I-C: Zaila Avant-garde 1st Black American to win the Spelling Bee

In the July 8 contest held in Orlando, Fla., Zaila won on the word “murraya” a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees. At that moment she spun around and jumped in the air as multi-colored confetti flurried around her.

Published

4 years ago

July 17, 2021

Isabelle Price

Zaila Avant-garde competes in the first round of the the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals in Orlando, Florida on July 8, 2021. (Photo by JIM WATSON / POOL / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Zaila Avant-garde, 14

Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from Harvey, La., is the first African American and the first student from Louisiana to win the National Spelling Bee. (Her father changed her surname from Heard to Avant-garde in homage to saxophonist John Coltrane.)

The first person of African descent to win the contest was Jody-Anne Maxwell a 12-year-old from Jamaica in 1998.

The National Spelling Bee began in 1925. Now known as the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the organization acknowledged in a statement that it “has not been immune from the social issues of its times, including the long-fought battle for racial equality. . . Our hope is that Zaila’s amazing accomplishments will be seen as an inspiration to other young people and another step forward in that cause.”

“It felt really good to win because I have been working on it for like two years. So to actually win the whole thing was like a dream come true,” she told CNN’s “New Day” on Friday. “I felt like in the moment I snapped out of a surreal dream.”

Zaila also holds three Guinness World Records for dribbling, bouncing and juggling basketballs. They include: the most basketballs dribbled simultaneously (six for 30 seconds); the most basketball bounces (307 in 30 seconds); and the most bounce juggles in one minute (255 with four basketballs).

She appeared in a commercial with Golden State Warrior Steph Curry in 2018.

For her win, which was televised on ESPN, she received a trophy and a $50,000 prize. This was only Zaila’s second time competing in a spelling bee. In her first competition she made it to the third round.

She told Good Morning America that the Bee was a “gate-opener to being interested in education.”

Zaila was in the final round with Chaitra Thummala, 12, from San Francisco.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans tweeted: “talk about #blackgirlmagic!”

The New York Times, CNN and BBC News were sources for this report.