The arrival of black women modeling as a profession began in early postwar America. It began most notably from the need of advertisers and a rise of black photography magazines. The women who advanced in such careers were those in a middle-class system that emphasized the conservative value of marriage, motherhood, and domesticity. Originally titled the "Brownskin" model, black women refined the social, sexual, and racial realities confined in the gender expectations of the modeling world. There was a profound need for black women to partake in the advertising process for the new "Negro Market". With the help of Branford Models, the first black agency, 1946 was the beginning of the black modeling era. Branford Models’ was able to "overturn the barriers facing African American in the early postwar period" especially by lifting at least one economic freedom. In this postwar America, the demand for such presence in magazines advanced "as a stage for models to display consumer goods" while assisting "in constructing a new visual discourse of urban middle-class African America".