Vanessa Williams

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So 20 years later, all of the, I guess, progress is an example of what I've been able to do by breaking this barrier.

But then again, you get the backlash of people wanting to kill you.

We had my parents.

Get out of here.

Yeah.

Yeah, my parents had a box and they would put all the death threats.

The FBI had all of the tracking.

Even when I would do appearances, they'd be like, be careful when you go to Chicago or be careful.

And I had no idea how crazy it was because they didn't want me to freak out.

But yeah, I had death threats as soon as I was one, as soon as I won at 20 years old.

Yeah.

Well, luckily they kept a lot from me because I think I would have been more terrified.

I mean, I wasn't terrified, but I would have been terrified had I known.

I got an inkling when...

When I came home from my hometown, we had like a hometown parade, and there were sharpshooters on top of one of our buildings.

And I live in a tiny town.

And I was like, wow, that's unusual.

And one time when I was doing an appearance in Alabama, and I was supposed to be on the back of a convertible with the convertible seat down.