I am sorry you are proud of the man who raped your great-great-great grandmother and left your hair

good. Please, this is not envy it is sorrow for the long road we must travel to be sisters. My lineage can be traced through the roots of my hair to Nairobi. Do not try to make me ashamed Of this fact, sorry my hair grows in tight cottonfields on my head and will not fly in the wind like the woman I am not.

Roots

If Hair Makes Me Black, I Must Be Purple

Yes, my hair is Straight But that dont mean that I aint Black Nor proud All it means is that my hair is Straight Because my hair is Straight Dont mean that Im Ashamed And it dont mean that I want to be White Furthermore it dont mean that I aint Together Yes, my hair is Straight And that dont mean a Damned thing! I am Black And Proud Knowing why

-Charlotte Watson Sherman

-Linda Hardnett

In my twenty-one-and-a-half years of living, I cannot recall a single day where I saw more black1 women wearing natural hairstyles than I saw wearing permed or processed hair, or hair either covered or extended with wigs and weaves. This is uniquely shocking to me when the facts are taken into account that I was raised in a house with three black sisters in a predominantly black neighborhood of a predominantly black city, attending predominantly black schools before college. Only in the last two months or so of those years have I actually been looking for it to happen. Conversely, in the last two months I do recall days where I would sometimes see only one or two African American women wearing their natural hair unaltered by chemical straighteners. As a student of the African Diaspora, this observation raised questions and concerns in my curious mind. The summative 1

question is simple: Why do African American women wear their hair in the ways that they do? The answer, as my research will show, is so much more complex. The two poems above coupled together shine light on one of the heaviest dynamics found in the research. That being the dynamic between hair being worn for reasons of pride and meaning, with intention on conveying a sense of character, and hair being worn simply for fashion as a matter only of personal preference. Read separately, the two poems speak to a wide range of dynamics and concerns also to be addressed in this essay. Some of those include issues of identity and selfrepresentation both individual and collective, the dynamic created by our conscious and unconscious influences, the issues of historical context, etc. The problem is that hair and the way it is styled always says at least something about an individual, even for those individuals that view their hair as just hair. There is no way to style your hair so that it conveys absolutely no message about yourself to others; even shaving it off says something. These general statements ring especially true in African American culture, wherein hair is often crucial to identity. Specifically for black women, decisions about how to style the hair create and speak to profound issues concerning gender, racial, and social identity. As Ima Ebong writes on the inside cover of her book titled Black Hair: Art, Style and Culture, From head to toe, no other physical attribute for a black woman is as culturally, socially, or politically charged as her hair.2 The reasons that hair plays such an important role in the shared culture of African Americans might stem from the unique history of Africans in America and the constructs of race, oppression, physical and mental bondage, abuse, and 2

complexes of inferiority that were collectively enforced upon them as a people. Upon first arrival in the Americas, black people were suddenly thrust into a beauty standard that used their physical features as measurements of ugliness. Not only in standards for beauty, but also in the social, economic, religious, political, and even scientific spheres, African Americans were viewed as existing at the bottom of the constructed hierarchies. In America, this unfortunate history is unique to black people. What is also unique to black people, specifically to black women, is the ritual habit of chemically and/or thermally manipulating the hair away from its natural state in the name of beauty. This practice has become somewhat of a cultural rite of passage for many African American women, one that is passed on from mother to daughter. After detailing the history of this ritual, one of the ultimate goals of this essay is to establish and understand to what extent, if any, the cultural practice of hair manipulating and straightening is related to this ugly history of enforced selfhatred. In 2013, when the black woman alters her hair chemically so that it is permanently changed from its natural state, is it an expression of bondage or an expression of freedom? The collected research will show that there exists a myriad of questions, concerns, and influences that must be addressed before this question can even be considered. This paper was initially intended to detail the specific history of chemical manipulation in black American culture. However, the topic and the question at hand can be much better understood and answered by studying the history of how hair is viewed by African Americans and how/why those views have changed over time. There will, though, be greater detail given to the cultural 3

practices of thermal and chemical manipulation. Essentially, this is a study of black consciousness done through the medium of hair and style. As is true of all consciousness, particularly collective consciousness, there are so many complex factors at play at each turn that simple answers are almost impossible. We can be certain that the cultural phenomenon in question is not as simple as black women wanting to look white. Also, so as to be fair and impartial, this essay will give brief focus to some of the beauty practices of women from different American cultures, studied almost as a control to a scientific experiment. Now, without further delay, let us jump into the history that got our hair culture to where it is today, wherever that may be. Unfortunately, the history has a brutally painful beginning in the transAtlantic slave trade, where it can be argued that African American culture has its origins. However, we can go back a bit further to examine some of the meanings hair and its styling had to certain tribes in West Africa, the ancestors of African Americans. In many of these cultures, hair was used to communicate messages of social status, marital status, age, religion, ethnicity and geographical origins.3 Hair styles were not worn trivially for fashion; in most instances the way that your hair was worn spoke directly to who you were as an individual. In some tribes hairstyles could even convey rather specific messages as well. For example, some Nigerian housewives living in polygamous families would style their hair specifically to taunt their husbands other wives with a style called kohin-sorogun, which meant turn your back on the jealous rival wife, since the style was meant to be seen from behind.4 It is also noteworthy that hair texture differed between the different 4

regions and ethnicities of western Africa almost as much as styling did. African hair (and Africa in general) is not as monolithic as it is often times viewed today. One thing the tribes of West Africa seemed to have in common was an aversion to unkempt hair which was often viewed as improper. Once forced onto the Middle Passage though, the diversities of culture did become monolithic; you were no longer Mende or Mandingo or Wolof or Igbo or Akan, you were black, and your hair was as meaningless in the new world as the status or message it once represented. As Ayuba Suleiman Diallo tells in his narrative, Africans captured for the slave trade were often shaved completely bald by their captors, which Diallo called the highest indignity.5 In his famous narrative, Olaudah Equiano writes about how the loose hair of the white men on the slave ship served to further convince him that he had somehow gotten into a world of bad spirits. He recalled asking one of his fellow Africans if they were going to be eaten by the white men with horrible looks, red faces, and loose hair.6 Equiano must have changed his views on hair though since he is seen wearing a European style wig on the cover of this narrative. This is likely because in the new world to which he conformed, loose hair was never seen as horrible, tight hair was. While enslaved, hair styling was one of the very few areas where African Americans were allowed to maintain some autonomy. Slave owners in America did not seem to make mandates about how the enslaved were to wear their hair.7 However, of course due to lack of tools and free personal time, the elaborate styles and techniques of West Africa were scarce in America. In their book on African 5

American expressive culture titled Stylin, Shane and Graham White use advertisements for runaway slaves that sometimes described hairstyles as sources for evidence that black people during slavery did still express themselves through hair. Some of the advertisements described hairstyles that were suggestive of a sense of value in the texture of the hair, like Ned from South Carolina who had a large bushy head of hair which he wears remarkably high or Bazil from Maryland who was written as having wooly hair, in which he takes great pride.8 On the other hand, some advertisements note blacks who styled their hair in imitation of their white owners, but White and White argue that this was done more as expressions of creativity, blending together African influences with current American/European trends. It was common practice for enslaved women to wrap their hair in cloths, rags, and bandanas while working in the sun. This was done partly for protection, and as Byrd and Tharps argue, rags were worn in part out of shame for the unsightly hair.9 However, it only seems fair to note that women of all races who are subject to hard domestic labor do tend to tie up and wrap the hair. In this time period African hair was often called wool by whites in America and viewed with disdain. The standard for beauty for both men and women required long straight hair with fine features, anything else was considered ugly. These views were forcefully put into the minds of the enslaved and eventually came to be accepted. In a WPA interview, one former slave recalled, Mistress uster ask me what that was I had on my head and I would tell her, hair, and she said, No, that aint hair, thats wool. Dont say hair, say wool.10 Amos Lincolns interview showed that not everyone had accepted this standard, he recalled, Sunday come they roll 6

out they hair fine. No grease on it. They want it nice and natural curly.11 The grease that Lincoln referenced in this quote could have referred to axle grease for wagon wheels, butter, bacon fat, goose grease or lye mixed with potatoes, all of which were used by the enslaved in the 19th century to straighten the hair. A butter knife heated in a can over fire aided in this process serving as a makeshift curling iron.12 Early in this century, as the influx of Africans slowed to a halt, and as mixed mulatto populations began to increase, the beauty standard that appreciated long straight hair and light skin became more and more accepted. It was in this time period and from these circumstances that the terms good hair and bad hair were formed. Some more privileged African Americans from this time period took to the popular European 19th century trend of wearing elaborate wigs. It is important to note that this beauty standard was not just about being pretty. Conforming to this standard and making any attempt to look less African allowed for some social mobility and could gain individuals access to better working conditions, better food, hand-medown clothes, and possibly an education. As early as the 1830s, white owned cosmetic companies began to capitalize on this impossible beauty standard for blacks by marketing their hair straightening products in the African American periodicals of the North.12 These companies ran advertisements that made it clear that the objective of beautification for African Americans was to look less like African Americans. Dangerous lye straighteners and arsenic wafers for skin lightening were marketed to blacks with phrasings that hinted at social mobility and acceptance within the dominant culture. The advertisements would often show wild and unkempt haired black faces as before 7

images and neatly combed straight haired white faces for after images. Hair straightening products were marketed specifically to African Americans in this way throughout the 19th century. A journal entry by a well-educated Black female poet from this time period shows how these messages of inferiority were internalized. Even as many prominent abolitionist intellectuals wrote highly of both her physical appearance and intelligence, Charlotte Grimke wrote of herself that: [After] under-going a thorough self-examination, the result is a mingled feeling of sorrow, shame and self-contemptNot only am I without the gifts of Nature, wit, beauty and talentbut I am not even intelligent. [Whereas] Hattie Purvis is quite attractive, just such long, light hair, and beautiful blue eyes. She is a little poetess, a sweet and gentle creature. I have fallen quite in love with her.13 It is unfortunate that even a woman of her appreciated beauty and obvious intelligence would come to view her self so lowly; but, it is somewhat understandable given the beauty standard she and her peers accepted. Other prominent Blacks from the 1850s used their voices to speak out against this standard and the beauty practices it produced. In March of 1853, William J. Wilson wrote in the Frederick Douglass Paper an editorial titled White is Beautiful that, We despise ourselves, we almost hate ourselves and all that favors us. We scoff at black skins and woolly heads, since every model placed before us for admiration has a pallid face and flaxen head We must begin to acknowledge and love our own peculiarities. In 1859 Martin Freeman spoke out in the Anglo-African Magazine that, The child is taught directly or indirectly that he or she is pretty, just in proportion as the features approximate the Anglo Saxon standard. Kinky hair must be subjected to a straightening process oiled, and pulled, twisted up, tied down, sleeked over and pressed under, or cut off so short that it cant curl, sometimes the natural hair is shaved off and its place supplied by a straight wig.14 8

The view of Wilson and Martin conflict against the views of the mass culture and against Grimkes in ways that are synonymous to the way many scholars today view African American cultural hair practices. This was over 160 years ago! These quotes show that the dynamics of consciousness behind the history being studied here are far from new. In the 160 years since, little has been resolved. Hair straightening kits were continuously marketed in demeaning ways and sold throughout the 1800s, and with the French invention of the hot comb in 1860, the cultural phenomenon of chemical and thermal hair manipulation was beginning to take shape. With emancipation in 1865, many African Americans were blessed with free time to manage their own appearances and self-representations. Although, especially in the south, this self-expression was still greatly limited by finances and with many people working as sharecroppers, freedom was not extremely different from slavery. After the emancipation, many populations of Blacks who had enjoyed freedom for a few generations sought to distinguish themselves from the newly freed masses. Emancipation came, in a way, as a blow to their social status as elite. One of the most frequent ways African Americans who thought of themselves as elite sought to distinguish themselves was by their physical features, specifically how light the skin was or how straight the hair was. Kinky hair to them was a sign of lowliness. This is why some churches would hang a fine-toothed comb on the front entrance, those who could not pass the comb through their hair smoothly without snagging it would be kindly asked to worship elsewhere.15 Lawrence Graham wrote in Our Kind of People: Inside Americas Black Upper Class, from experience telling

how these views on hair continued to permeate the African American upper class well into the 21st century. In the very late 19th century, African American women began to sell homemade hair tonics and gels to their friends and neighbors, and some would charge small fees to style and dress their hair for them.16 This process continued on through the turn of the century and is still practiced at least to some extent today. Some of the more successful home enterprises expanded into successful businesses and profited off of the rise of consumerism of this period in American history, eventually expanding their businesses of cosmetic manufacturing and beauty services into multi-million dollar industries. This led to what business historian Juliet E. K. Walker called the Golden Age of black business in America, referring to the period between 1900 and 1930 when the beauty products industry excelled.17 At the dawn of the 20th century, a slight shift in consciousness can be noted as African Americans began to enter the black hair care industry, creating, marketing and selling beauty products themselves specifically for African American hair. They marketed and sold some of the same products hair straightening creams and skin lightening gels that can be historically tied to enforced self-hatred and complexes of inferiority. However, for the most part, these African American owned companies advertised in ways that can be distinguished from the ways that White owned companies did in the previous century. The companies took advantage of the fact that most Black people in this time period were seeking social and financial uplift and to make a decent living for their families, believing that cosmetic changes could make differences in their qualities of life. Thus, the general motif in 10

the advertisements was to improve upon your appearance. They wrote from within the black community for uplift within the black community with no specific appeal to look less like a black community (and more like whites). These new companies, many being owned by women, marketed their products to African American women with a sense of kinship, acceptance, and understanding. They advertised by stressing concerns for health, stylistic versatility, hair length, and economic well-being, thus recontextualizing the meaning of hair in the black community.18 What is most important is that their products were not marketed with any suggestions of inferiority. This may be why the cosmetics business proved to be one of the few areas of commercial activity where black consumers showed a preference for products manufactured and sold by African Americans. Noliwe Rooks, in her book on African American beauty culture titled Hair Raising, gives close detail to a number of advertisements from companies owned by African American women in the early 1900s. None of the ads she reviews make any reference to Black women having features that lack in any way, they instead appeal simply to the basic want to look better. Madame T.D. Perkins, who advertised for her products and services as a Scientific Scalp Specialist, used before and after images of her own hair in her ads promising women that her products would make any kind of hair grow. Madam M. B. Jackson marketed her products by stating, If you have good hair, care for it. If you have a diseased scalp, treat it. If you have little or no hair its your own fault and a good reason for quick action, also noting that, Madame M. B. Jacksons hair grower can be used with or without straightening the hair.19 There were, however, adverts from African American owned companies that 11

did market their products by suggesting inferiority, singing the praises of straightened hair, lighter skin tones, and thinner facial features, but these companies were in the clear minority. The advertisements that had the greatest effect on hair culture were the ads that called for agents, urging Black women to earn livings for themselves by selling products door to door and acting as ambassadors for the new African American standard of beauty. These agents were often members of the communities in which they carried and sold beauty products, and together with other advertisements likely had a great influence on the rise of beautification in the Black community. With this rise came a new standard of beauty, one including as opposed to relying on hair straightening as mode of improving appearance. Thus, hair straightening became an African American cultural practice that women took part in based on African American standards. The process, though rooted in desire to look less African, now gained new meaning that had nothing to do with this desire. The new desire was to look new, because straightened hair was in. It was in vogue it was fashion, fashion that was marketed by African Americans to African Americans in ways that did seek to uplift. The trend spread like wildfire and it is from here, I believe, that the current practices derive. Black women then, as now, did not seek to apply chemicals and hot combs to their hair in order to look like white women, but more to look like their mothers and sisters and friends. It was completely possible then, as it is now, for someone to desire straightened hair without ever even seeing a white person. As Lawrence Levine argues in his famous book on black consciousness, in general it was not the case during this time period 12

that black women wanted to look white as much as it was that black women simply wanted to enjoy the same freedom to construct their appearances as white women did.20 This new fashion grew to become ritual as mothers began to pass it on to their daughters. Because hair straightening was often put off until young girls reached a certain age closer to maturity, hair straightening grew to be viewed by many as sort rite of passage, or initiation into Black womanhood. Hair straightening became an intimate ritual of Black womens culture. bell hooks describes it best in her story, Straightening Our Hair: On Saturday mornings we would gather in the kitchen to get our hair fixed that is, straightenedMamma fixed our hair. Six Daughters there was no way we could have afforded hairdressers. In those days, this process of straightening black womens hair with a hot comb was not connected in my mind with the effort to look white, to live out standards of beauty set by white supremacy. It was connected solely with rites of initiation into womanhood. To arrive at that point where ones hair could be straightened was to move from being perceived as a child (whose hair could be neatly combed and braided) to being almost a woman. It was this moment of transition my sisters and I longed for. 21 This fashion, like any, also tended to display class distinctions in the extent to which the fashion could be met and kept up by individuals. The beautification techniques of straightening were most consistently kept by African American women of the middle class. Straightened hair only remained straight until it had contact with moisture through rain, shampooing, swimming, sweating, etc. Black women wore plastic rain scarves, seldom swam, and washed their hair about every two weeks just before straightening it again. 22 This high maintenance style would be hard to upkeep for women with lesser means. However, women of the lower classes, 13

much like those today, tended to do whatever it took to meet the standard for beauty. Hortense Powdermaker notes in his cultural study of the Deep South titled After Freedom that poorer women also go to a hair-dresser regularly, to have their hair greased and pressed. If money was short, a chicken might be offered as payment.23 For African American women, this was the modern look. Though some women, mostly in the south, continued to wrap, braid, and cornrow their hair, these styles were eventually viewed as old-fashioned. In a WPA interview, Mary Williams, who was formerly enslaved in Arkansas stated, I dont think nothing of this here younger generation, they say to me, Why dont you have your hair straightened? but I say Ive got along this far without painted jaws and straight hair!24 This style was not only specific to women; African American men also participated in the trend to straighten the hair. In 1911, Age Magazine drew attention to the fad by asking, Have you had your hair straightened yet?... Up and around 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, colored men can be seen in large numbers who are wont to take off their hats repeatedlyand stroke their glossy hair with their hand in an affectionate manner.25 As the style and the necessary processes to achieve the style became more popular, the industries and enterprises that provided the style grew and prospered. Hair salons popped up all over the country, and women continued to run local business from their homes/kitchens. The racism of the time period located the black beauty industry at a crossroads where black pride and Jim Crow realities met. White owned beauty industries lacked the expertise to meet this new African American beauty standard so black enterprises were sheltered from that competition.26 White 14

beauty salons also refused to serve African American customers. This actually helped the African American beauty industry to prosper. One example of how quickly and successfully this industry prospered and expanded is seen in that some towns in Georgia were so concerned with its growth depleting the supply of domestic labor that they imposed punitive taxes on hairdressing businesses for the purpose of ruining their success.27 Another example is found in the 1920 Blue Book directory of Black businesses in Chicago, which listed no less than 211 barbershops and 108 beauty salons, not including the scores of establishments run by women out of their kitchens for their friends and neighbors.28 Beauty culture had, for the first time in African American history, set up a successful network where thousands of black entrepreneurs could prosper independently and do well. Middleclass black beauticians who had education but faced racial discrimination in other female careers (like nursing or education) now had a field where they could be recognized as professionals. Working class black women now had career options where they could work independently and escape domestic labor.29 Becoming a licensed beautician required training and some education. Annie Malones Poro System for styling the hair and Madame Walkers hair-care techniques were taught in beauty schools to thousands of young black women. Because of this, and because of their essential role in the community, many beauticians came to view themselves as doctors. By proudly displaying their hardearned cosmetology licenses on the walls of their shops, black beauticians discouraged customers from quibbling over prices and critiquing their work and by modeling themselves after physicians and urging others to do the same, licensed 15

black beauticians sought to distinguish themselves from unlicensed kitchen beauticians. 30 Beauty salons also prospered in part because of the sense of community that they brought to hair care. Of course, the primary reason for attending the salon was for hair care, but in these sessions African American women found a space to talk about life, love, stress, work, business, or virtually anything. Noliwe Rooks recalled of her first experience in a hair salon: I loved being in the waiting area and listening to all the bits of advice and gossip that were flying about. Sitting in a room full of African American women and hearing them talk about sex, white people, men, and money, I got clues on how to be and how not to act. I loved the smell of the place; the mixture of burning hair, sweet-smelling shampoos, chemicals, food and sweat. I was absolutely fascinated by the way my hair looked when she finished: flat, shiny and smooth.31 From this it can be seen how hair and beauty culture brought a new sense of community to black womanhood, reminiscent of how beautification was often a communal effort during the later stages of slavery when African Americans were allowed Sundays off for worship. Where in the 1800s, the Black middle-class intellectuals had championed the styling of natural hair as the preferred style, by the mid-1920s, straight hair had obviously become the style to signal middle-class membership.32 This continued on through the decades of the twentieth century and into the present day. In the years surrounding the first World War, black nationalism and intellectualism were on the rise and there existed many competing ideologies of identity coming from leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois, J. A. Rogers, and Marcus Garvey. Garvey, a staunch advocate for African heritage pride, refused to run ads for hair straightening in his newspaper 16

The Negro World. He openly criticized those African American papers that included such ads, claiming that such products were designed to make a new negro race and make a monkey out of the Negro,33 also once proclaiming in a speech, Dont remove the kinks from your hair! Remove them from your brain!34 These views were not very influential though, as hair straightening processes continued to remain the norm and actually grew in popularity with the New Negro movement and the Harlem Renaissance of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Though for the most part it has been argued here that these straightening processes were in accord to a uniquely African American aesthetic, it must be remembered that this aesthetic does have traceable ties to the history of perceived inferiority by many African Americans. It should also be noted that there were, of course, many African Americans who straightened their hair did do so with weakened images of self, acquired from the white American beauty standard that still held African Americans as less attractive if not ugly. In the 1940s, the conk hairstyle grew in popularity specifically among African American men, and as noted in Malcolm Xs autobiography, many times the pain of this chemical transformation was undergone in envy of the white mans hair. Malcolm noted vividly: The congolene just felt warm when Shorty started combing it in. But then 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 eyes watered, my nose was running. I couldn't stand it any longer; I bolted to the washbasin. I was cursing Shorty with every name I could think of when he got the spray going and started soap-lathering my head. The mirror reflected Shorty behind me. We both were grinning and sweating. And on top of my head was this thick, smooth sheen of shining red hair -- real red -- as straight as any white man's. How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking "white," reflected in the mirror in Shorty's room. I vowed that I'd never again be without a conk, and I never was for many years. This was my first really big step toward self17

degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man's hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are "inferior" -- and white people "superior" -- that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look "pretty" by white standards.35 The process Malcolm references, and others that were similarly painful and dangerous, retained ritual like status in African American communities in the following decades of the twentieth century. Straightened hair, whether chemical or thermal, continued to be the accepted norm for the black middle and working classes even in the 1960s when Malcolm was speaking out against it. He was no different from any of the other leaders previously mentioned who argued against the practice almost in vain. The chemical straightening processes were different though in that they were much more permanent than the thermal straightening typically done using grease and a hot comb. As previously mentioned, thermal straightening would only last until the hair made contact with any kind of moisture, even perspiration. So, in 1947, the white-owned company Lutrasilk introduced its Lutrasilk Permanent that promised to keep the hair straighter for longer. The following year, Walker Manufacturing debuted its Satin Tress line so not to be outdone. Both processes still required the use of a hot comb and were not extremely successful, but did serve to pave the way for new inventions of the mid-1950s like Johnson Products Ultra Wave Relaxer that could straighten the hair without heat.36 George E. Johnson, an African American beauty industry mogul, and his company Johnson Products grew into success in the same rapid style as did Madame C. J. Walker a half century earlier. Johnson perfected the formula used in lye conks by replacing the crude 18

potato starch with petroleum and marketing the product as Ultra Wave Relaxer in 1954 to immediate success, and Ultra Sheen Relaxer for women a few years later for repeated success.37 These more permanent products, labeled perms drastically changed African American hair culture. African American women who took on the process of perming their hair were now less tied to their natural hair textures; they could keep their hair loose and kink free for longer periods of time than ever before. Another revolutionary aspect was that many of these products could be purchased as retail and applied at home.

The above image of Coretta Scott King and Angela Davis, taken by Peter L. Gould and titled Hairstyle versus hair statement, says a thousand words about the time period in which the afro gained popularity. The Afro hairstyle took the black hair culture by storm in a revolution of consciousness that sought to praise instead of hide the peculiarities of African hair. In the mid-1960s and through the 1970s the Afro was worn as a statement. The statement that the Afro made or sought to make was in contradiction to the styles that required hair straightening. Angela Davis in the image above is making a statement with her hair, a statement of pride and heritage, in line with the Black Power movement. Coretta Scott King is simply wearing a fashionable style. With her straightened, likely chemically relaxed hair, 19

Mrs. King was not seeking to make a political statement with her hair so much as she was choosing a fashion in the same way she might have chosen that morning to put on that specific blouse. This also speaks to the eventual death of the Afro. Because the Afro eventually grew in popularity as a style and not so much a statement, it did what most styles do and eventually died out. Hair straightening has not yet died out mostly because it is not so much a style as it is a door opener for many styles. One of the styles it opened the door for was the curly-permed Jheri Curl of the 1980s. For all purposes, the Jheri Curl was just a style. However, this style can serve to prove that a technique designed to take the hair even further away from its natural African state can be a uniquely African American style nonetheless. The creator of this style, African American hair specialist Willie Lee Morrow wrote in his book, 400 years Without a Comb, that the popularity of the style was due to black brothers and sisters seeing the style as easily accomplished and simply maintained while remaining uniquely and significantly Black. The style, though reliant on chemical straightening, and thus traceable to histories of self-hatred, appeals to a uniquely African American aesthetic. It has hopefully been shown that chemical and thermal straightening processes, over the decades since the turn of the twentieth century, can and have escaped direct ties to complexes of inferiority and desires to look white. A permed hair-do is not necessarily a symbol of a diseased black consciousness, especially not on an individual basis. Collectively, the styles worn by African American women that require hair straightening, whether chemical or thermal, can be shown to appeal to 20

a uniquely African American standard of beauty. The sign of diseased consciousness, in my opinion comes from those women who refuse to be seen wearing their natural, unstraightened hair. Though even this can be linked more to a sense of fashion and not being caught outside of it, the fear in showing the natural hair cannot be dismembered from a sense of physical inferiority. Many women would not admit to it, but this results from a sense of shame in the natural appearance as if it is not good enough. Where the scholars who spoke out against hair straightening practices tended to err was in their failing to realize that hair straightening was just as much of an African American ritual as is the celebration of Kwanzaa. It even takes root in a time period of black pride with economic unity and success. What they should have criticized is the exclusivity of these straightened styles. Still, the best way to study and understand this area of black consciousness is from word-of-mouth testimonials and confessions of actual African Americans who take part in this ritual. These first person accounts are crucial, and must be studied along side the history in order to find answers. Thanks to the technology of the current age, this black consciousness can be easily studied on online hair forums and discussion blogs. Lanita Jacobs-Huey did an extensive month long study on one discussion forum that had a unique beginning. The forum began when one Oprah Winfrey Show viewer mailed in an unpublished letter to Essence magazine asking if the straightened hair Oprah wore was hers or false. The question sparked immediate and ongoing debates on the issues surrounding Black hair culture in America. 38

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What was found was that not only did women have many differing, sometimes contrary views on hair and hair techniques, but also that they sometimes stood adamantly behind these views and took them to play serious roles in their individual and cultural identity. Women often made references to their own hair using them as bids for their own cultural authority. One of the most common questions to be answered before a new coming bloggers post was to be respected was, How do you wear your hair? in this, the internet users could get a gauge of the persons identity within the African American culture.39 This led me to create my own survey to include into my research to help answer the question of why women wear their hair in the ways that they do in the current year 2013. There are two questions that I missed in my survey that I greatly regret. I wished I had asked for the persons age; this would have helped me to gauge some of the historical influences that shaped their decisions. I also wish I had asked one crucial question, would you give your daughter a perm? or the somewhat less binding, would you straighten your daughters hair? Of the 25 women I surveyed, an extremely small sample size, the average age for when they had received their first perm was 9 years of age and most had been given by their mothers. Only 3 women responded that they had never received perms. Surprisingly, most of the women I surveyed enjoyed wearing their hair natural from time to time. Some referenced celebrities as their inspirations for going natural, some referenced family members and friends, many referenced a love for their Godgiven features. The general consensus was that the terms nappy hair and good hair were false social constructs. Those who answered said mostly that good hair 22

was healthy hair; some even said that nappy hair is good hair, nappy = happy. They all seemed to agree that hair was important. Many of the participants claimed that hair was an imperative part of their identity that they enjoyed and loved. What these surveys and internet blogs seem to show is another slight shift in consciousness amongst black women. This shift is not necessarily away from hair straightening but away from the exclusivity that the process has enjoyed for almost a century in African American beauty culture. Whether worn for fashion or for political statement, natural kinky hair is just as beautiful as (if not more than) straightened flowy hair and should be included in the Af-Am beauty culture. There is no reason to hide the natural hair. There is no reason to shun the straightened hair. The exclusivity that straightened, chemically and thermally manipulated hair has held does in a way show signs of diseased black consciousness. Shifting back towards natural styling, not just one style (like the Afro) but a versatile range of styles, is a sign of a healthier black consciousness in regard to hair. In 2013 there is no reason why a new African American standard of beauty should not emerge, one that includes all styles straightened and unstraightened as signs of unique Black beauty. (6,721 words)

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Notes and References 1. Throughout this essay, the terms black, Black, African-American, Negro, and Af-Am will be used interchangeably to refer to any and all descendants of Africa living in America and the collective culture(s) to which they (or we) share ownership. 2. Ebong, Ima Black Hair: Art, Style and Culture 3. Ayana Byrd, Lori Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, St Martins Griffin, New York p 2 4. Lois M. Gurel, Marianne S. Beeson, Dimensions of Dress and Adornment: A Book of Readings, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Cornell University 1979, p37 5. Thomas Bluett, Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Son of Solomon (London, 1734) 6. Equiano, Olaudah, b. 1745, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. Eighth Edition Enlarged, Norwich Printed for, and Sold by the Author, 1794 7. Shane White, Graham White, Stylin: African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit p41 8. White and White, Stylin p47 9. Byrd Tharps p13 10. George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (19 vols.; Westport, 1972) vol. 18, 80, 83 11. Amos Lincoln, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography 12. Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story p17 13. Charlotte F. Grimke, The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke, ed. Brenda Stevenson (New York: Oxford University Press) 1988 p33-36 14. Both quotes are cited in Rooks, Hair Raising, p35-37 15. Kathy Russel-Cole, Midge Wilson, Ronald E. Hall, The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color in a New Millennium, Random House Digital, Inc., revised ed., 2013, p60 16. Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Styling Jim Crow: African American Beauty Training During Segregation, p14 17. Juliet E. K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship (New York: Twayne, 1998), p182 18. Rooks, Hair Raising, p42 19. Rooks, Hair Raising, p47 20. Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: African American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1977) p284-293 21. bell hooks, Straightening Our Hair, in Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories, edited by Juliet Harris and Pamela Johnson 22. Maxine Leeds Craig, Aint I a Beauty Queen? : Black Women, Beauty and the Politics of Race, Oxford University Press, 2002, p27 24

23. Hortense Powdermaker, After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South, Lightning Source, Inc., 2008, p180 24. Mary Williams, b. 1855, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography 25. White and White, Stylin, p164-165 26. Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Styling Jim Crow, p14 27. White and White, Stylin, 169-170 28. Kathy Peiss, MakingFaces: The Cosmetic Industry and the Social Construction of Gender, 1890-1930, p143 29. Susannah Walker, Independent Livings or No Bed of Roses p62 30. Lanita Jacobs-Huey, From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Womens Hair Care, p47 31. Rooks, Hair Raising, p5 32. Rooks, Hair Raising, p75 33. Marcus Garvey, The Colored Negro Press, in Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, vol. 2, ed. Amy Jacque-Garvey (New York: Atheneum Press, 1971), p79 34. Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, p38 35. Malcolm X, Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, reprinted by Ballantine Books, 1999, p60-62 36. Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, p46 37. Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, p86 38. Lanita Jacobs-Huey, From the Kitchen to the Parlor, p93 39. Lanita Jacobs-Huey, From the Kitchen to the Parlor, p98

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