Miss South Carolina


The Miss South Carolina competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of South Carolina in the Miss America pageant. The pageant was first held in Myrtle Beach and moved to Greenville starting in 1958 and remained in that city until the 1990s. Spartanburg hosted the pageant in a few different venues until new leadership took over the organization and moved the pageant to Columbia, SC in 2011. The pageant was televised since the 1960s until the 1998 pageant. Televising was resumed with the 2000 pageant through 2006. The pageant returned to television in 2014.
Two South Carolina women have become Miss America; Marian McKnight of Manning in 1957 and Kimberly Aiken of Columbia in 1994. Six more have been first runner-up at the national competition and another thirteen have placed in the Top Ten. The Miss South Carolina organization is the leading state pageant in the nation in scholarship money raised for young women- surpassing many much larger states.
Morgan Nichols of Lexington was crowned Miss South Carolina 2019 on June 29, 2019 at Township Auditorium in Columbia, South Carolina. She competed for the title of Miss America 2020 in December 2019.

Gallery of past titleholders

Results summary

The following is a visual summary of the past results of Miss South Carolina titleholders at the national Miss America pageants/competitions. The year in parentheses indicates the year of the national competition during which a placement and/or award was garnered, not the year attached to the contestant's state title.

Placements

Preliminary awards