From the category archives:
Thanks so much to Mesha for sending me a link to this Essence gallery article called Hairstyle File: The History of Revolutionary Hair. Very interesting, in particular the first woman featured. I will have to research her a bit more.
Frances Harper
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Here’s a another example of the attempts of slave owners to impose headwraps on women of African descent as a means of seperation. (Read about Headrags and the Slave here).
A little background:
In New Orleans 1700s, due to the scarcity of European women, it was permissible and acceptable in society for Europeans to have long term extramarrital relationships with women of African descent. The children of these unions as well as a practice for freeing soldiers and workers who excelled at their jobs resulted in a large population of free people of color.
Placage was a recognized system in which European men had something of a common-law marriage to the women of color. It was not unusual for a white man to have a white wife in one area and his placee. Probably for the first time in this new America, these women of color (who were usually cultured, wealthy, and well coiffed) were perceived as a threat to the local European women. There had also been complaints of men making advances towards Caucasian women, mistaking them for the “mixed race” women.
In response, and to lessen the popularity of the ever growing size of the “people of color”, the governor of Louisiana at the time created what are known as the tignon laws. He required that free women of color wear headwraps. They also were forbidden to wear any fine clothes, plumes or jewelry in their hair, go out at night without a lantern, or gather in assemblages at night.
This law was an attempt to reassign these women to their “proper” station in life. Making them wear a head kerchief was meant to tie them back their slave station in life.
The women who were targeted by this law found a way around it. With their headwraps, called tignon (pronounced tiyon), they used the finest materials and decorated them with ribbons and jewelry. The tignon was worn many different ways by women and became quite the fashion statement.
Needless to say, the Tignon laws had very little effect on the longterm relationships between the two races. The practices of placage continued until the Civil War and Reconstruction occurred.
Resources:
Creole: the history and legacy of Louisiana’s free people of color By Sybil Kein
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Hairwraps, kerchiefs, head rags, whatever you want to call them, have a significant history in America. We now wear head wraps and scarves as accessories. They are cute, we like finding different fabrics for them, and they give our hair a little pizazz.
But there was another time in America when wearing a head rag/scarf/whatever was a very different thing. The time I’m referring to is of course slavery.
Yes, I’ve hopped back on the slavery train again. Why? Because so many of the ideas we have (and when I say “we” I mean African Americans in general) about our hair stem from the horrors imposed during the course of slavery.
In Africa, the headwrap was a part of the outfit. Just like some of you are dying for a new pair of Uggs, the same might have been true for the average West African lady hoping for a new headwrap (I’m kidding, but you get my point).Of course during slavery, fashion is kind of put on the back burner.
So, anyhoo, the head rag did serve practical purposes.They were either supplied by their masters per rations or procured by the slaves themselves from a weaver or recycled pieces of clothing. It protected the hair from grime and sun while working out in the fields. It offered protection when carrying heavy loads on one’s head and minor protection from lice and ringworm. It absorbed sweat and prevented it from stinging the eyes of the wearer. But the headrag was so much more than this during the period of slavery.
For whites, it was a way to further implement control over their slaves. From The African American Headwrap: Unwinding the Symbols:
The earliest, South Carolina’s Negro Act of 1735, “specifically set a standard of dress for the enslaved and free African Americans” (ibid. 132). In 1740 amendments, South Carolina’s slave code further elaborated the dress regulations (Genovese, 1974:359). In 1786, while Louisiana was a Spanish colony, the governor enacted a dress code which forbade: “females of color … to wear plumes or jewelry”; this law specifically required “their hair bound in a kerchief” (Crete, 1981: 80-81; also Gayarre, 1885: 178-179 and Wares, 1981:135).
In the antebellum period, the Southern whites’ concern regarding the symbol- ism inherent in the dress of African Americans continued. Citing one instance, Richard C. Wade writes that a Savannah editor bemoaned the “extravagant” dress of city blacks. Wade says that the journalist, ” observing that a turban or handkerchief for the head was good enough for peasants,…noted that ‘with our city colored population the old fashioned turban seems fast disappearing’ ” (Savannah Republican 6 June 1849, quoted in Wade, 1981:128-129).
From the same article, it seemed that blacks also used the headwrap system to mark status:
In addition, headwraps functioned as status symbols within the African American communities Louis Hughes, born 1843, enslaved in Mississippi and Virginia, noted: “The cotton clothes worn by both men and women (house servants), and the turbans of the latter, were snowy white” (1897) 1969:43). After the family moved to the city, Hughes recalled, “Each of the women servants wore a new gay colored turban, which was tied differently from that of the ordinary servant, in some fancy knot” (42).
Headwraps were also worn in the black community, even post slavery, for religious ceremonies and to denote age and marital status. It’s so interesting that what’s your on head has such an impact on everyday life.
Sound familiar?
I have two more write ups concerning headwraps coming up, stay tuned 
References:
Hair story: untangling the roots of Black hair in America By Ayana D. Byrd, Lori L. Tharps
The African American Headwrap: Unwinding the Symbols By: Helen Bradley Griebel
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The title of this post seems like a good name for a book, doesn’t it?
Well, in my case, that book would be under the “Horror” section.
We all know what the afro pick is. But let’s get a little background information on it. 
The picture above is an African wooden comb. Not only would these combs be made of wood, but also of ivory and bone. Diligently made, these were treasured family items. Fast forward to slavery, where we didn’t have a comb. And then on to the 60s, the beginning of the Black Power Movement, the popularity of the afro, and the resurgence of the African comb. That is essentially what the afro pick is.
Afro pick with the fist. Leftover from the black power movement, this pick is popular among first time naturals
Not only could this get your afro bigger and better than ever, with the addition of certain colors and a tightly fisted hand, it could notify others of your dedication the cause. Fastforward again to the 70s. The pick and the afro go hand in hand. Just as the afro became less of a political statement and more about style, so did the pick. And if you didn’t have your afro (with your pick well in hand), you were deemed a “jive turkey”.
Fast forward one more time to the 90s and now. (Let’s skip the jherri curls, shall we?) The afro is once again in vogue, though not as popular as before. But is the pick still as popular among naturals today? Maybe not. I do know of some ladies who use it, but I don’t believe most do.
The above picture is myself with a picked out fro after a month or two of being natural. I’ve often recounted my BC story where my friend pulls out her afro pick for my newly natural hair. As I try to pick it out as I’ve seen on TV and the movies, I hear hair snapping and breaking. I also feel pain and discomfort that is a little to close to the dry combings of childhood.
Needless to say… when I went to Sally’s the next day, an afro pick was not on my list of things to buy.
Later, I found a small pick on the end of one of my combs that came with a set and later used that to pick my hair out. I did not, however, do it the same manner I’ve seen others do. While my hair was still slightly damp and full of moisturizer, I carefully took very small sections of hair and pulled the pick through. I patted each section to help round it out some. It took me about 45 minutes to do. Not your typical afro pick experience. I’ll just settle for my shrunken fro,thanks!
Even if it’s not a big part of many naturals’ lives today, the pick and the African comb have both left their mark.
From Hair story: Untangling the roots of Black hair in America:
This widetoothed invention has served as a prototype for modern utensils–from blowdryer attachments to regular combs–used by Black people all over the world.
How true is that? So, even though I may not use a traditional pick, I still heart my widetoothed comb and am thankful to the afro pick for being the prototype. I may still even buy the pick with the fist on it one of these days.
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Hand Wool Card
Denied their traditional wooded combs by their masters, slaves basically had no combs at all of their own. I’ve read in several books how slaves would sometimes use a wool card to comb their hair. What’s carding, you ask? From wiki:
Carding is a mechanical process that breaks up locks and unorganized clumps of fiber and then aligns the individual fibers so that they are more or less parallel with each other. These ordered fibers can then be passed on to other processes that are specific to the desired end use of the fiber: batting, felt, woolen or worsted yarn, etc. Carding can also be used to create blends of different fibers or different colors. When blending, the carding process combines the different fibers into an homogeneous mix. Commercial cards also have rollers and systems designed to remove some vegetable matter contaminants from the wool.
A hand card is (also from wiki):
…typically square or rectangular paddles manufactured in a variety of sizes from 2×2 inches to 4×8 inches. The working face of each paddle can be flat or cylindrically curved and wears the card cloth. Small cards, called flick cards, are used to flick the ends of a lock of fiber, or to tease out some strands for spinning off. A pair of cards are used to brush the wool between them until the fibers are more or less aligned in the same direction
From Jane Morgan, an ex slave interviewed:
We carded our hair caze we never had no combs, but de cards dey worked better. We used de cards to card wool wid also, and we jes wet our hair and den card hit. De cards dey had wooden handles and strong steel wire teeth.
And I thought a fine toothed comb was painful! Actually, they rather remind me of a paddle brush except for the whole steel teeth thing. In the book “Hair Story”, it mentions that there are no records of attempts to make combs more akin to the combs of their homeland.
Seeing this, I wonder several things. I wonder if slaves turned to these cards because of the prevailing idea among whites that Africans were not human at all, but animals with actual wool atop their heads? I wonder if sharing grooming tools with animals contributed to the presence of ringworm and parasites that afflicted slaves? And I wonder if we truly appreciate how fortunate most of us are to have so many choices in grooming accessories, now, in the present…and a love for our hair (most of us ).
African Wooden Comb
Resources and great reads:
Hair story: untangling the roots of Black hair in America By Ayana D. Byrd, Lori L. Tharps
Stylin’: African American expressive culture from its beginnings to the zoot …By Shane White
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I haven’t done a “It’s just hair” post in awhile so here’s one I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. It’s about a style called the conk. African American men in the early to mid half of the last century wore their hair in this style by essentially relaxing it and styling it usually in a pompadour (combing the sides of the hair back and curling the top over itself).
Little Richard--So pretty!
You might be asking yourself why I chose a relaxed style as a subject. Because it shows that black women were not the only victim of the hair “assimilation” left over from slavery.The conk started with the musicians of the Swing Era and spilled over to rock n roll.
The term “conk” is actually short for congalene and it was a concoction made of potatoes, eggs, and lye. Though there were commercial products available, most men used a homemade mixture.
And just like current relaxers, they took a lot of work including:
Nat King Cole--I love this man even if his hair was straighter than a needle!
The conk lost its popularity in the 1960s during the black power movement. Malcolm X spoke of having one in his book, calling it his “first really big step towards self-degradation”. From Malcolm X’s autobiography description of how it felt to get a conk, done by his friend Shorty:
My head caught fire. I gritted my teeth and tried to pull the sides of the kitchen table together. The comb felt as if it was raking my skin off…my knees were trembling.
How he felt after:
My first view in the mirror blotted out the hurting. I’d seen some pretty conks, but when it’s the first time, on your own head, the transformation, after a lifetime of kinks, is staggering. The mirror reflected Shorty behind me. We were both grinnin’ and sweating. On top of my head was this thick, smooth sheend of red hair-real red-as straight as any white man’s
And his later reflections:
How ridiculous I was!…this was my first really big step toward self-degradation when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh with lye, in order to cook my natural hair until it was limp, to have it look like a white man’s hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in American who are so brainwashed into believing that the black people are “inferior” -and white people “superior”-that they will even violate their God-created bodies to try to look “pretty” by white standards.
James Brown--Love the superman curl!
So, however you might feel about Malcolm X, his observations from then and now are interesting and, in my humble opinion, have a ring of truth to them.
As I said, the conk went the way of the dinosaur in the late 60s and gave way to the afro, only to be replaced by other chemical processes among men like the Jheri Curl. And the beat goes on…
Chuck Berry--Cool shot
Even though it’s sad that they felt unacceptable sporting their natural hair textures, these men that I’ve posted pictures of did break a lot of musical barriers for African Americans and all of them were/are very talented.
I still think each of them are beautiful and it brings a smile to my face to see them. With this air of nostalgia, I can’t help wondering if the conk might come back.
Who would be someone would could pull this style off? Hmmm….
or maybe…
Resources and good reads:
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