An Exploration on Narratives of Black Hairstyling

“Television came on at 6:30 and went off at 10:30 something like that, but that tea kettle would go on and we would fix tea, and both of us had naturals and we would bring out the comb and the brush and the bergamot hair grease and he would--I would sit in between his legs and he would part my hair, scratch my scalp, oil it and braid it, every night, and I would do that to him. So that was an hour…That's when we bonded, that's when we would talk, "Well today you said this to me. This hurt my feelings. Why did you say that? You know my father use to say that to me. That wasn't a good thing, blah, blah…” I mean just really, just sharing all kinds of emotions or embarrassments or joy or whatever…and when we would have company over we would braid their hair. And then our company used to say, "A family that braids together stays together," but…that's how the households worked. They would come over, we would sit them down and braid their hair and we would all be in the room together, the husbands, the children, everybody and we'd all be doing something with the other person, maybe, maybe it's they're playing cards, or Solitaire over here, maybe somebody's playing with a child, but we're all there. That's called, they call it, stor familj, which is like big family but we…weren't living together but we would share times together like that” [1].

These are the nostalgic words from HistoryMaker Jamie Foster Brown (1946-), a magazine publisher, who also served as assistant producer of BET’s Video Soul and Video LP programs and later founded Sister 2 Sister magazine and created the syndicated radio show, The Sister 2 Sister Celebrity Update. In her interview with Janet Sims-Wood, she recalls her experiences of living in Sweden while black, specifically remembering intimate moments, where she and her husband, Rennie, were able to intimately connect with one-another by the ‘simple’ acts of parting and greasing scalps in the afternoon, around the same time that the television came on. For Ronnie Foster specifically, sitting in between the legs of her husband as he tended to her scalp and her, allowed for her to be more open and inquisitive towards her husband. This was the time where she felt most compelled to communicate emotional topics with him. The two were good at caring for each other’s hair, so when they had company, they found themselves braiding their hair as well. Foster Brown used the Swedish word, stor familij, to describe the simultaneous act of hairstyling and being in community with her company or family.

For HistoryMaker Deborah Lathen (1953-), corporate lawyer who was also the former Federal Communications Commission Cable Bureau Chief, sitting with her grandmother, as she platted her hair, was also a time in which emotional notes were sung. Here, Lathen’s grandmother used this time to plat her hair as a time for affirmations:

“...Granny would, we would sit in the summertime, and she would plat my hair, and in those days, 'cause they were always trying to grow your hair. Now, I just cut it all off but. And she'd sit and hold you between her thighs; you're just nestled, locked as she's pulling on this hair. And you hated it as a little girl getting your hair combed. And, but she would say to me: "You are really smart, and one day you are gonna be president of the United States," okay. And she'd rub my head and she'd go: "You got smart bumps. You got smart bumps. You're gonna be president of the United States 'cause you are really smart." And I believed her…I got smart bumps, I got smart bumps. And we know that she was probably braiding my hair too tight; that's probably what those bumps were from (laughter). But she told me I was smart, and she never lied to me about anything, and she treated me like that” [2].

The textured areas on Lathen’s scalp from the tight braiding of her grandmother became a positive affirmation for her as well as a symbolic note that reminded her of those affirmative words.

However, for people like HistoryMaker Isaac Hayes (1942 - 2008), film actor, musician and singer, and film score composer who was the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Song, recalls such demarcations as being one of the unfortunate effects of having black hair. Hayes said that black people suffer from folliculitis the most, which can have graphic consequences:

“...I used to rub my grandfather's shaving brush. They'd say to make--shaving, gonna make your hair grow. Well, I don't know if it was true, but I grew a beard early, and I was in the NDCC National Defense Cadet Corps, just like ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps], and I was an officer. I was a first drill team commander. Then I was promoted to adjutant staff. I became a major. Well, you know, the sergeant said, "Sorry, no beards in the army, son." So I had to shave my last couple years. Old Spice and all that stuff. But, you know, blacks suffer with a thing called folliculitis. That's when the follicle grows back in the skin and it infects it, and you get them bumps. And to my ring around the collar, I had blood around the collar because shaving, and you'd start bleeding and stuff, and they'd put tissue to stop bleeding and all that stuff. I had to go through it…'“ [3].

During this interview with Isaac Hayes, he mentions folliculitis as he describes what led him to his signature look, which mainly focused on him being bald, which made scour for oral histories of HistoryMakers that pertained to having a signature look or a signature hairstyle.

HistoryMaker Barbara Boyd, a television reporter who was a groundbreaking broadcast journalist, who was most known for her feature on breast cancer awareness, on which she reported one week after having a mastectomy, happened to have on that was designed only for her to wear:

“...I have worn this style since 1988. For about sixteen or seventeen years…Well, this particular year, I had been so busy I had forgotten to get my hair done. And you know how it is with ladies when they first get their hair done, they're sort of tight and you know, not the best looking. So I said to my daughter, "Oh, I forgot to get my hair done and when I get it done it's just going to look so tight and yucky." So she said, "Well have Roz braid your hair for you." Well I'm thinking about these braids that are hanging down, you know, I said, "Oh, I'm too old for that." So she says, "No, she'll develop something just for you." Or she'll develop something for you. So when I went, this is the style that she gave me. And she won't--she doesn't do it for anybody else--she won't do it for anybody else, this is MY hairstyle. I think she does it for one other woman out of state. This is--you know, if you don't know my voice, or you see my head, you know it's Barbara Boyd. And it's maintenance free, I just love it. I can go…” [4].

As mentioned earlier, HisroryMaker Isaac Hayes, who also had a signature hairstyle, described some of his challenges that led him to his signature look:

“And every summer, I'd let my beard grow because I was out of school. Well, when I graduated [Manassas High School, Memphis, Tennessee], I just let the beard grow. And I was a musician, and I had--wore that process [chemically relaxed hairstyle], had my hair slicked and everything. Sometime I went natural. But when I started wearing a process, it was hard to keep up. Had to sleep with stocking cap on and all that kind of stuff. I had a do-rag. And your hair sweat in the summertime, and you wake up, if you don't have the do-rag on, it looked like it's spiked, you know. So I just got tired of all that stuff, so I went around the corner from Stax [Records, Memphis, Tennessee] on College [Street], Mr. King's barbershop. "Mr. King, I want you to cut it all off. I want to grow a new crop of hair." "Okay." He cut it all off. But I was going to go natural. When I walked outside, I said, "Damn, some breeze out here, man. It feels good." So I decided to keep it like that. I knew I looked weird. People said, "But he got bald head and beard." People from the bus, looking out the bus, pointing and stuff, because it was a different sight, you know, but I kept it like that. And so in '67 [1967], that's what was on, but I had the top hat on. You couldn't see it. Not until I recorded 'Hot Buttered Soul,' released in '69 [1969]. That's a bald head. That's when it took off” [5].

Continuing on the topic of signature looks and signature hairstyles, I was able to come across the interview of magazine publishing chief executive and entrepreneur, HistoryMaker Edward Lewis (1940 - ), who also cofounded Essence Communications, Inc., where he served as the CEO and publisher of Essence magazine, where he talked about how HistoryMaker Susan Taylor’s , who became the beauty editor in chief of Essence magazine in 1981, signature hairstyle also added to her becoming the face of Essence magazine.

“…I made the decision that she should be the editor in chief in '81 [1981]. And she's--as I said, she did a--she did one helluva of a job, in terms of how the world ultimately came her way and, and, and with her signature hairstyle, she really became the face. And, and we--whenever Susan and I would close our doors and, and talk about issues as it relates to what her needs were, it was always about the magazine. It was always about black woman” [6].

Magazine editor Susan Taylor (1946 - ) also started Nequai Cosmetics in her early twenties, which was one of the first companies to create beauty products for African American women. Taylor became instrumental in expanding the various narratives of expression of black hair through her work with Essence magazine:

“...There's always the rainbow of beauty. We have to honor women's bodies. We need to do a better job of showing, you know, just the range of black women's bodies. This is critical stuff. Also I think that magazines can do indelible damage to women and I think that they have by showing just one narrow ray of what is beautiful and what it does is it says to the 99.9 percent of the women to whom that little narrow standard does not apply, that you're not beautiful, that your hips are too big, that you're, you know, your hair is not long enough or blonde enough, and your skin is wrong, and, you know, your breasts are too small or too big. And what we know is that each one of us, this has been my message through Essence from the time I was beauty editor to this moment: "Each one of us is a divine original. Get to know and love and honor yourself” [7].

These mesmerizing words prove that Taylor has an intentional reasoning for positively re-imagining how black women can express and feel loved by their black hair by honoring the physical variations of blackness.

HistoryMaker Harriette Cole (1961 - ), a talent coach and model, is the creative director of Ebony magazine. Cole is also founder and creative director of Harriette Cole Productions, an etiquette and life coaching company; is the author of several books on etiquette and lifestyle; and writes a nationwide advice column. She, too, had spoke highly of Susan Taylor’s role in expanding black hair narratives:

“...But I want to tell you something about Essence too. Because Essence was a great environment for me to just know celebrating the me of me. You know [HM] Susan Taylor is very inspirational you know everybody knows this about her, but she really does believe in celebrating black women, all shapes and sizes and hair textures, and just in all the ways that we come. She celebrates us, and Essence was that place you know it was an environment where you saw every black woman. And there were men too, but really seeing every black woman and, and cele--celebrating us as we are, was a huge thing. And the biggest thing for me I believe, that I recall now is just a celebration of us and our hair… While I was at Essence I grew to have a greater appreciation of natural hair…Susan Taylor and the beauty team, and, and just the gift, being at Essence, of traveling around the world and seeing how we live and how we honor beauty in different ways, really opened my eyes to different options. And I will always be indebted to her for that” [8].

Cole also remembered having hairstyles that her parents strictly disapproved of in the midst of her praising of Susan Taylor:

“I had all kinds of organic hairstyles for a long time. And I remember going home one time with twists and you know my parents called those "pickaninny twists", you were not gonna have those things. You know this is during, this was during the '80s [1980s] when there was resurging in interest in Afro centric hairstyles. My father's like--I remember him telling me, ‘You will not come to my table looking like that, would you like for me to go to the store and buy you a comb?’ And it, it hurt because it was a time when I was kind of exploring my ethnicity and my how I looked culturally. But I grew up when you know you, you blew the hair out, you did something to make it straight. And my mother had straight hair, so you know my hair is not like hers, so it needed something to do to it to make it straighter.. So it--kind of an amalgam of what I learned from my parents, and what I learned traveling all over the world, and doing a lot of research on expectations and social graces. I started thinking about my father's opinions about most of my hairstyles over the years and he doesn't know the one I have now you know. It's straight but it's spiky, it's still like not conforming because I think I discovered this one after he had passed. But I realized what parents want is to protect their children and to help provide them with whatever opportunity is possible. And for him, having a conservative hairstyle was very important; he grew up in a time when you needed to look conservative to even have a chance” [9].

Searching the term, “pickaninny” in the HistoryMakers digital archive yielded 8 matching stories. HistoryMaker Loann Honesty King (1940-), a program administrator and educator who also served as a consultant for the Department of Education and as the Associate Director of Jobs at Youth Chicago, and later become Dean of Instruction and Vice President of Student Services and Enrollment Management at Kennedy-King College, used this term to describe how her hair looked as a result or former hazing:

“...Well, it was just terms of dress. You know we had, one thing they made us do, which was kind of funny though I have to admit that, but they made us, we had to wear twenty pearls; we have twenty pearls on our pins. So, we had to braid our hair in twenty braids and they all had to be the same length. Well, my hair was twice as long as it is now, and we had people who had very short cut hair in my group. So, then of course it meant that pinning mine up or folding it up so everybody would be the same length. Then we had to put a pink or a green ribbon on each of these. Well, that looks like a pickaninny to me, use the term pickaninny. That's basically what they had you looking like. This was before braiding was fashion” [10].

For Honesty King, manipulating hair into braids was seen as derogatory, as she considered that time period to be unideal for braids as a fashion statement.

Academic administrator HistoryMaker Charlestine Fairley (1938 - ), an academic administrator who dedicated her career to improving education, substance abuse prevention, and counseling services to the disadvantaged, also related to strict policing of hair, much like HistoryMaker Harriette Cole’s childhood experiences:

“...I started there [33rd Avenue High School] and Mr. Greene [J.B. Greene] was the principal and, as I recall, he was very strict. For some reason, every time he came 'round, we would scatter. We didn't stand around much and didn't talk much to him, but the teachers were highly educated, very caring, more like parents than teachers are today…They had gone to, because of segregation at the time, the State of Mississippi would pay for them to go out of state to study, and a lot of our teachers had master's degrees from Northwestern [Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois], 'cause that's where they would go in the summer but I just remember the school being like a community. We were required to dress--there was no dress code, but the monitor would check to see if your shoes were shined, if your socks were cleaned, if you had combed your hair they would make these little marks that give you a star if everything was okay, or if they'd give you a check mark or something less than a gold star if, if you were not well groomed” [11].

For Fairly, how your hair looked at home or to you parents was one thing, but she also had to maintain an expected and prematurely decided level of neatness in relation to her hair. However, to some, ‘neat’ granted deeper explorations of what expressions of black hair could mean or imply.

HistoryMaker Dianne Reeves (1956-), a jazz singer who also toured as a lead vocalist with Sergio Mendes and Harry Belafonte, and received five Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, mentioned during her interview with Larry Crowe spoke highly of how blackness was able to seemingly manifest in New York, NY in comparison to to Los Angeles, CA. Though she had seen dreadlocks before, she did not know of the different ways that they could be expressed:

“My mother [Vada Burrell Swanson], when she realized that I was moving from Los Angeles [California] to New York [New York] was pretty concerned 'cause she grew up in Detroit [Michigan] and she knew th- you know all the gangs of the street, and she was very streetwise and stuff, and she didn't think that I was. So, she was constantly trying to tell me, you know, how to be when I go to New York. "When you go to New York you have to have a certain kind of attitude. You have to walk with authority." And I'm just looking at her going, "Okay," you know. Not, you know she doesn't think I'm paying attention and then she would come back with something else. "So, when you're out in New York" you know and she's just not feeling like I'm getting it. So, one day she comes to me and she said, "When you walk down those streets of New York, you think, motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker," (laughter). I laughed so hard and I got it, and when I got there it was amazing because now--living in Los Angeles and living in Denver [Colorado] the--there was a different kind of black experience. When I got to New York, there was you know it's, it's rich with culture and there's places to go at every hour of the day and night to hear somebody express themselves in this, in a very unique way and I remember having--I just fell in love with it and I remember the first time I went to see DanceAfrica, and the audience you know, everybody was dressed in prints from Ghana and Nigeria and I had never seen you know groomed locks. I'd seen dreadlocks, 'cause I knew of Bob Marley, but I'd never seen you know these what they called--well, they called them--they were groomed you know. They didn't call 'em dreadlocks, they called 'em locks and braiders and different kinds of ways to wear your hair braided and different--I mean it was just--the smells, the way of living, the philosophies of living and the, you know just being in Brooklyn [New York] and seeing you know in the summertime the color of Brooklyn with people sitting on stoops and you know West Indian parades and all the different food and, and going to an event and you know I remember one time I went to this event, I walked in the bathroom. Everybody looked like me but nobody, no woman in the bathroom spoke English, and I thought, my god, you know or standing on the street corner and hearing like four or five different languages” [12].

Being able to see different narratives of black hairstyles possibly added to her general appreciation of New York’s overall depiction of blackness, as it was worth mentioning when she described all of which fed her spirit, heart, and mind [2].

Search Terms:

Sitting in between + legs + hair
Family+hair+braid
Signature+hairstyle
Black+hair+honor
Hair+parents+strict
Pickaninny
Growing up+dreadlocks

Student Ambassador Update:

This week, I was able to pinpoint the ways that I wrote this blog post differently than my last ones. For starters, I began with a quote to set the overall tone and style of the post. When writing this blog, I found myself utilizing various search terms, but this time, I was more ‘random’ in my selection of videos to watch, focusing less on looking for what I may have wanted to see and more on what could and would inevitably surprise me. Also, when a specific name was mentioned, I looked to see if that person was a HistoryMaker, and if they were, I searched their interview for key words pertaining to the topic in which they were referenced or mentioned. I also paid more attention to how many stories came up, when I entered key terms and made note of the variations. Lastly, I believe that ultimately having an expected amount of quotes to have from different HistoryMakers forcibly, in a good way, made me more creative in my overall searches and writing.

References

[1] Jamie Foster Brown (The HistoryMakers A2007.046), interviewed by Janet Sims-Wood, February 5, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 9, Jamie Foster Brown talks about her experiences in Sweden.

[2] Deborah Lathen (The HistoryMakers A2008.003), interviewed by Cheryl Butler, January 30, 2008, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 2, story 1, Deborah Lathen recalls her earliest childhood memories.

[3] Isaac Hayes (The HistoryMakers A2003.142), interviewed by Larry Crowe, June 25, 2003, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 1, Isaac Hayes explains his signature look.

[4] Barbara Boyd (The HistoryMakers A2000.006), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, July 11, 2000, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 5, Barbara Boyd explains her signature hairstyle.

[5] Isaac Hayes (The HistoryMakers A2003.142), interviewed by Larry Crowe, June 25, 2003, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 1, Isaac Hayes explains his signature look.

[6] Edward Lewis (The HistoryMakers A2014.224), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, October 7, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 6, story 1, Edward Lewis recalls promoting Susan Taylor as the editor in chief of Essence magazine.

[7] Susan L. Taylor (The HistoryMakers A2001.072), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, March 8, 2001, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 7, Susan Taylor recounts her experiences as editor-in-chief of Essence.

[8] Susan L. Taylor (The HistoryMakers A2001.072), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, March 8, 2001, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 7, Susan Taylor recounts her experiences as editor-in-chief of Essence.

[9] Harriette Cole (The HistoryMakers A2006.131), interviewed by Denise Gines, November 7, 2006, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 5, story 3, Harriette Cole talks about HistoryMaker Susan Taylor and embracing her natural hair.

[10] Loann Honesty King (The HistoryMakers A2008.014), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, May 28, 2008, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 9, story 6, Loann Honesty King remembers her experiences with hazing, pt. 2.

[11] Charlestine Fairley (The HistoryMakers A2007.162), interviewed by Denise Gines, April 25, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 5, Charlestine Fairley recalls attending 33rd Avenue High School in Gulfport, Mississippi.

[12] Dianne Reeves (The HistoryMakers A2016.060), interviewed by Larry Crowe, September 24, 2016, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 5, story 4, Dianne Reeves recalls her transition to New York City's music scene.

[13] Dianne Reeves on, 2016.

An Exploration on Narratives of Black Hairstyling

References

Childhood Experiences of Halloween

The Crown Act: Black Hair & History