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The ‘Secret’ Lives of Barbers, Beauticians

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Journal-isms host Tiffany Gill of the University of Delaware, who in 2010 wrote "Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry," and Quincy T. Mills of Vassar College, on leave at the University of Maryland, author in 2014 of "Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America." via Zoom Sunday, July 16, 2020 in Washington Metro area. (Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks)

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Drop-In for Quotes Needn’t Be the End
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“If you’ve seen ‘The Color Purple,’ you know that really iconic shaving scene, the razor’s at the throat,” author Quincy Mills told the Journal-isms Roundtable. “In many ways, white men had to believe in the fantasy of Black inferiority in order to sit in that chair. . . . White men had to believe that that barber would not slit his throat. And in many ways, Black barbers made quite a bit of money, based on those perceptions. . . .” (Credit: YouTube)

Drop-In for Quotes Needn’t Be the End

It’s become a cliche among some journalists to seek out a Black barbershop to get the pulse of the Black community on political matters. Enough already! say two experts on Black barbershops and beauty salons.

“This is a really tired story,” said Quincy T. Mills, author of “Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America.”

Why not seek out Black beauty parlors on those subjects as well, asked Tiffany M. Gill (pictured, by Sharon Farmer), author of “Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry.”

Black women’s role in civic activism, as many will say about their place in society in general, has been vastly underrated — and much of that engagement goes on in that familiar Black community institution, the beauty salon.

Mills (pictured, by Sharon Farmer) and Gill were guests at the Zoom version of the Journal-isms Roundtable, held Aug. 16 during the Sunday brunch hour and attracting 32 participants on the call, with another 312 watching on Facebook Live! It can be seen on YouTube here.

The conversation was entertaining and eye-opening: “Fantastic guests… Learning so much more about what I thought I knew…,” Lorrie Grant, managing editor of Transport Topics, wrote in the chat box. “Agreed this is great and so many story ideas,” added Nichelle Smith, enterprise editor for racism and history at USA Today.

A’Lelia Bundles, former network television producer and biographer of businesswoman Madam C.J. Walker, declared, “I hope the working journalists were able to get a more nuanced understanding of what’s going on in those shops for the next time they stop in for political season interviews.”

It helps to see Black barbershops and beauty salons not just as places to get one’s hair done and to visit for entertainment, but as sanctuaries and bastions of Black economic independence. Their story covers nearly all of African American history, back to slavery, when Black barbers were allowed to cut only white men’s hair, as befit personal servants.

Gill, who teaches at the University of Delaware, gave this example:

“In 1964, you see a sit-in at a lunch counter in Mississippi, and Anne Moody, the author of the canonical memoir, ‘Coming of Age in Mississippi,‘ was in the sit-in, and she got pummeled there. . . . and she comes right out of the sit-in, and she comes straight to a beauty shop. And of course . . . her hair’s messed up, like that’s part of it.

“But what’s really interesting to me when I read her memoir is that the way the beauticians who had a shop right across from the NAACP office treated Anne Moody. They said to her, ‘My goodness, you were in that sit-in, huh?’ And she said, ‘yes, do you have time to wash my hair and style it?’

“And the beautician pushes all the other clients out the way. And says, ‘Right away, get in this chair.’ And while she was in the chair, she takes off Moody’s stocking, and washes some of her clothes, and does her hair while the clothing was drying. And to me that’s an example [of] not just her wanting to get her hair done, but of the beauty shop, of being in this space with other Black women, and having her dignity restored, having her body restored, which I would say is a political act, particularly in the light of racial violence.

“And I always bring that example up, particularly when I am talking to my students, or other younger people who like to have these conversations about self-care, as a very individual act, but I think what we see in this example of Moody and the beauticians  . . . we see this idea of community soul-care, and getting all of us to think about, for those who are on the front lines of the battles, of activism today, are there spaces where they can be restored, not just physically, but also have their souls restored?”

The Journal-isms Roundtable drew 32 participants on the Zoom call, with another 312 watching on Facebook Live! (Credit: Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks)

Anyone who has seen “The Color Purple,” in which the abused Celie, played by Whoopi Goldberg, comes close to slitting the throat of her abuser “Mister,” played by Danny Glover, can relate to a point by Mills:

“Black men came into barbering as enslaved folks,” Mills said. “They were tapped to be the body servants, the personal servants, the grooming folks for enslavers, right? There’s a way in which enslaved Black men were able to keep some of the profits from their barbering, which also helped them to buy their freedom, to buy the freedom of family members.”

Later, barbers would use that money to build businesses, Mills added, as did Alonzo Herndon in Atlanta and John Merrick in Durham, N.C., who established insurance companies. (The white man-Black barber relationship continued after slavery. “White men and women enjoyed being served by blacks as one of the reminders of the genteel privileges of the old South,” Mills, now teaching at the University of Maryland, writes in his book.)

“So what’s important to know is that native white men did not want to be barbers, they associated barbering with servile labor, and they thought it was beneath them to do anything that smacked of manual labor or unskilled labor, and this kind of value judgment carried over at least through the 1890s and 19-zeros,” Mills told the group.

“Obviously, that was a fantasy, that was a farce, because let’s keep in mind that barbers were using straight razors back then, and if anyone who has ever held a straight razor or has been shaved by a straight razor, you know that it takes a whole lot of skill to use that razor.

“If you’ve seen ‘The Color Purple,’ you know that really iconic shaving scene, the razor’s at the throat. . . . In many ways, white men had to believe in the fantasy of Black inferiority in order to sit in that chair. . . . White men had to believe that that barber would not slit his throat. And in many ways, Black barbers, they made quite a bit of money, based on those perceptions. . . .”

Throughout most of the 20th century, beauty parlors and barber shops aided the Black freedom struggle. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee had offices in some Southern barber shops. Beauty parlors provided voter-registration information and material from the NAACP, which was outlawed in some states.

Later, political candidates caught on. In 2008, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had beauty and barber-shop outreach programs in their campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, Gill said.

The beauticians “were at the center of perhaps the only lucrative industry where all the aspects were controlled primarily by women . . .,” Gill added. “It wasn’t just a Black space, it was a woman space. And I found that just because it was a woman’s space, it was dismissed as frivolous and under the radar for those opposed to civil rights. One of the things I always found really interesting is that while barber shops come under surveillance by the government, particularly in the era of Black Power. . . . in all of my research, I never saw an example of a beautician or beauty parlor coming under surveillance, even though the stuff that was poppin’ in beauty shops rivaled what was going on in barbershops. . . . “

Those barbershops also had newspapers. During the Great Migration, Mills recalled, “Black newspapers were placing their papers inside of barbershops, and so barbershops were places where folks were reading the newspapers. They were spaces where folks, in the South, were talking about whether they would migrate north. They were reading letters from family members and friends who had already migrated. They adjusted to life in Northern cities around barbershops and churches and beauty shops. . . . The Chicago Defender actually — some of those reporters reported on stories that they heard in barbershops.”

The themes of economic independence — people were freer to pursue social justice if they did not have to work for white people — and safe spaces were paramount in the discussion. But so were current-day uses of barber and beauty shops for social purposes. Women who wouldn’t tell anyone else would confide in their beauticians about sexual or domestic abuse. Beauticians now dispense health information and discuss violence prevention.[ PDF]

The Confess Project calls itself “America’s first mental health barbershop movement.”

“I think there are a number of really important and exciting projects happening in barbershops,” Mills said. “The Confess Project, for example, that’s based out of Arkansas, Little Rock, Ark., that’s around Black men and mental health. Alvin Irby, who started [New York-based] Barber Shop Books, placing children’s books in barbershops, again, to think about Black boys and literacy. Again, these projects exist because of the centrality of this waiting public,” those awaiting their turn in the chair.

Learning about the other side of beauty and barber shops might be as easy as turning to someone nearby in the newsroom.

Rob Parker, sports analyst for the sports cable channel FS1, among other roles, has co-owned SPORTY CUTZ Barber Shop in Detroit for 19 years. “Before the economic downturn really hit in 2008, I remember hearing in Detroit . . . about their troubles . . . this was like a year or two before it hit the rest of the country. You know, it was real, and people talked about it,” Parker told the group.

Wanda Lloyd, retired editor of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, said her grandmother owned a school of beauty culture in Savannah, Ga. Patrons would tell Lloyd that “the most important thing they got from my grandmother’s school was economic independence, even if they’re doing it out of the back room of their house. That’s an important part of what beauticians do, and barbers, not only the politics of it but the economics of it,” Lloyd said.

Veteran sports journalist Garry D. Howard, now director of corporate initiatives for American City Business Journals, pointed often to the success of his sister, Tonya Michelle Howard, whose skill at braiding led to clients such as Vanessa Williams and Tyra Banks.

Developing a hair business “gave her a sense of self-worth a lot of Black women needed,” Howard said. “Our parents were divorced, so I think [developing expertise with hair] contributed to that self-empowerment that made them say, ‘I can do this all by myself.’ “

As for Howard himself, Famous McFadden, a South Bronx barber that Howard had consulted since he was 8, advised him on, among other things, whether to pursue a journalism career. Now McFadden’s son, Brian McFadden, is a Howard mentee.  

The roundtable opened with a discussion of how the media would cover Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., chosen as the Democratic vice presidential nominee the previous Tuesday. She is the first woman of color with that distinction.

Attendees talked about the effect of Harris’ Jamaican and South Asian heritage, and about colorism, until photographer Sharon Farmer scolded, “What matters more than anything is that she’s a woman. That takes precedence to me over skin color right now. As long as we keep writing stories about who’s what color, that argument is wasting [time]. This guy gotta go, y’all, he gotta go! . . . Let’s get to the higher plane here! About how we’re gonna get rid of this guy, OK?”

Chadwick Boseman discusses “Black Panther” on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” in 2018.

‘Black Panther’ to Air Sunday Night

As assessments and appreciations of actor Chadwick Boseman mounted over the weekend, TBS announced that “Black Panther” will air Sunday at 8 p.m. ET/PT in a tribute to Boseman, the blockbuster film’s star who died on Friday from colon cancer at age 43.

The Walt Disney Co. and Marvel Studios followed by announcing “a special commercial-free airing of ‘Black Panther’ on ABC, followed by a special examining the actor’s life and work,” Variety reported on Sunday.

“The movie is set to air without interruption on ABC from 8 p.m.-10:20 p.m. The rest of the 10 p.m. hour of primetime will be filled by ‘Chadwick Boseman — A Tribute for a King,’ produced by ABC News.

TBS also aired the film Saturday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

With the notable exception of Black Press USA, website for the Black press, news organizations rushed appreciations of Boseman, praising him for his onscreen roles as Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and James Brown and as the fictional T’Challa, who in “Black Panther” returned home to the African kingdom Wakanda to take his rightful place as its ruler. [Black Press USA posted a piece Monday by Nsenga K. Burton.]

“I know exactly when he started trusting me as a reporter,” Kelley L. Carter wrote Saturday for The Undefeated.

“It was after he’d landed the role of Black Panther. We were talking – laughing – about how the Black Panther film was easily the most anticipated, but the script wasn’t done. Boseman knew how hungry everyone was to see a Black superhero come alive on screen.

“He also knew that his voice was now strong and people were listening and paying attention. And he knew that even as this moment was victorious, Hollywood still needed to be called to task on the things that make this industry problematic, even as it was in the infant phases of creating a groundbreaking blockbuster with a mostly Black cast.

“Hollywood was toasting Boseman – he was part of Vanity Fair’s prestigious 2014 Hollywood cover, which confirmed that the industry was paying attention to the Howard University grad who also graduated from the British American Drama Academy.

“But he didn’t like being the only one. . . .”

In the New York Times, Wesley Morris compared Boseman to James Baldwin.

Morris wrote Saturday, “The exciting mystery was always going to be where Boseman would take his classiness in addition to Wakanda.

“He’d completed a film version of August Wilson’s play ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,’ for George C. Wolfe, with Viola Davis. And though he might have been hesitant to try yet another extraordinary American, he was good at it. Why stop at Thurgood Marshall? Boseman’s solemnity and round, serious, searching eyes better matched James Baldwin. That pairing might have been something — Baldwin’s middle age meeting Boseman’s, the actor’s dexterous way with dignity approaching the thinker’s never-ending demand that the country respect the dignity of Black Americans.

“His loose resemblance to Baldwin is secondary to what Boseman might have done with Baldwin’s erudition and elocution. For Boseman was no impersonator. He was in his way a historian — of other people’s magnetism and volition. Excellence and leadership spoke to and sparked him. They had to. No one approximates this much greatness without a considerable reserve of greatness himself. . . .”

Boseman gives the commencement address at Howard University in 2018. (Credit: YouTube)

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Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity. Send tips, comments and concerns to Richard Prince at journal-isms-owner@yahoogroups.com

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