Two new directors of four local Miss Mississippi Corporation pageants are trying to drum up contestants and support.

“These pageants were fixing to get canceled because the last director quit,” said Amanda Harris, who is in her first year leading the Miss Vicksburg and Riverbend pageants but has worked in the pageant system since 1995.

Co-director Barbara May is heading up the Miss Vicksburg and Riverbend teen contests, which are preliminaries to Miss Mississippi’s Outstanding Teen, a pageant that aims to get younger girls interested in the Miss Mississippi system.

In 2008, the Vicksburg and Riverbend pageants took a hiatus for the first time in 50 years following the retirement of its longtime directors.