Vecepia Towery

Vecepia Towery (born December 9, 1965) won $1,000,000 on the Marquesas edition of Survivor, and became the first African-American to win.

Vecepia began the game as a member of the Maraamu tribe, which had the misfortune of losing the first three immunity challenges. After this occurred, a random tribal swap occurred, transferring her, Rob Mariano, and Sean Rector, to the Rotu tribe. While none of them were voted out during their stay at Rotu (they were promised an alliance with the remaining Rotu members), a tribal merge occurred during episode 7, and Rob was voted out due to his excessive scheming.

Vecepia and Sean seemed to be the next ones to go, until three of the old Rotu members realized that they would eventually be voted out as well. Vee and Sean convinced them to ally with them,creating a cross-tribal alliance, which was successful in voting out the other Rotu members. After this point, the remaining five were Sean, Vecepia, Paschal English , Kathy Vavrick-O'Brien , and Neleh Dennis. The latter three, as former Rotu members, stuck together to vote out Sean, and once again Vecepia's days appeared to be numbered. As it happened, she won the next immunity challenge; the ensuing vote ended up in a tie, which was broken by the other three contestants drawing a rock from a bag; Paschal drew the purple rock, which meant that he would be "voted" out (as a consensus could not be reached). This is still considered one of the most controversial Survivor rules, though this situation has not come up again.

Neleh won the final immunity challenge, bringing Vecepia to the final two. Here, the two faced a jury that accused both of them of self-righteousness (although each had a couple of strong allies). In the end, Vecepia won the jury vote 4–3. She was considered by many fans as not being deserving of the title, for she listened to others strategies than making her own. Because she was overall an unpopular survivor she was not asked to partake in Survivor: All Stars. <Survivormillionwinners>