Every black girl (now woman) of a certain age—I know, has traveled the journey of straightening combs, Royal Crown hairdressing, and sitting between grandma’s legs wincing with each pull of the hair. I would venture to guess lots of black women can still point to the burn marks on the tips of their ears they got the night before Easter Sunday. As black men, most of our hair journey was observational, but we also have stories to tell. Anytime you see period-dated portrayals, photos, or video clips of black men from the Nicholas Brothers to the Temptations from the 1920s into the 1960s, you will see lots of chemically relaxed hair. The look was achieved with a product called Congolene—a virtual witch’s brew of lye, eggs, and starches, known on the streets as getting your hair ‘conked.’
The unfortunate belief was that having “good hair” meant it had to be dyed, fried, or laid to the side. I heard the good hair myth most of my young life. If you were black and had naturally soft curls or some straight hair, you heard, “You must have some Indian in your family.” Many of the hair textures among people of color resulted from heartache, pain, and triumph over enslavement, colonization, and forced miscegenation. I grew up with black men and women in my family who had some of those attributes, fair skin, thin lips, and “good hair.” It took years as a child of the 60s to turn my envy into pride. Part of that change came when singer/activist James Brown dropped his Marcel and told us to “Say it loud, I’m black, and I’m proud.” Until then, my friends and I got the ‘two-week skinny.’
The two-week skinny was both economical and practical. You got your hair cut as low as possible without looking as if you had a shaved head. It was the cheapest, fastest, and easiest to maintain haircut for black boys. I was still too afraid to adopt the growing afro look James Brown made acceptably cool. In 1973 I decided, along with millions of black teens across America, that I would do myself a “solid” and grow out my hair. The longer it got, the more my feeling of belonging to something rose in my chest. Walking around with my afro-pick—raised fist handle poking above the back pocket of my Wrangler jeans was right on, brother. My sister followed suit a few years later when she got to make hair choices and wore an afro that rivaled mine in every way.
My hair freedom morphed into the shag (hair cut short except for a prominent length of hair at the base of the skull) made famous in my circles by Ralph Tresvant of the singing group New Edition. There was a diversion in the eighties with the S-Curl and, tragically, the Jheri-Curl. A relative of mine proclaimed with Jheri-Curl activator staining his collar, this hairstyle will save the black man’s hair! With lots of oil-stained sofas, blackened car headrests, and millions sold in curl activator, the Jheri-curl died an ignominious death. Today I see my grandchildren proudly sporting their locs. Like most black teens, hairstyles begin as fads and slowly become educational. Eventually, my grandboys and grandgirls will understand the history behind what is a measure to fit in with their peers. They, too, are saying—in their own words; ‘Say it loud.’ Happy Juneteenth.
Vote Against Guns
