An HBCU pageant contest that made national headlines has reached a resolution.
Spelman College announced Friday morning that Kinsley Wilson will step down as co-Miss Spelman, leaving Jillian Collier to serve as Miss Spelman during the 2026-27 academic year.
“We full support Kinsley and are deeply grateful for her grace and leadership throughout this journey,” the statement reads. “We look forward to celebrating the leadership and service of the 2026-27 Miss Spelman Court in the year ahead.”
The controversy stemmed from the Miss Spelman pageant where Collier and Wilson were both named Miss Spelman following a scoring miscalculation.
Wilson was originally named the winner, but after a recalculation of the pageant’s scoring metric, Collier had the higher score.
The uproar about the decision to have two campus queens prompted Spelman to release a statement, asking the school’s community to treat both winners with kindness.
Wilson detailed her decision to step down in an interview with Baller Alert, explaining that the controversy had taken a toll on her.
“My options were to either step into a fourth attendant role. I haven’t seen that in the past courts,” Wilson said of options presented to her by the Miss Spelman advisors. “The other option? I could relinquish the crown or completely step down.”
Given 24 hours to make a decision, Wilson said she was distraught and asked for more information regarding her scores but received only an offer to share the crown.
She chose the latter, stating there wasnot enough “substantial evidence to the claims” for her to give up her reign completely. “Things weren’t adding up, and there were certain things that had occurred that made me question the fairness of the process,” she said. “The fact that the administration wasn’t taking that seriously, I didn’t feel like it was fair for me to just be okay with that.”
Wilson went on to say the social media uproar and cyberbullying led to her decision to step down.
“I have decided that I no longer desire to continue representing the institution as co Miss Spelman College,” she told Baller Alert.” To spend my senior year sharing a title born out of unresolved conflict, navigating an arrangement with no clear footing, representing an institution under a cloud that has not yet lifted, that is not service. That is survival. And I did not come to Spelman to merely survive.”
