Introduction African American hair care and culture has evolved over the past century in spectacular ways, particularly thanks to an infusion of pop stylings from the arts and entertainment world where hair care and culture have created new looks meant to express individuality, creative energy and so on. However, going back in history one can see that African American hair care and culture was similar yet different from what it is today. White and White showed that in the 1830s Negro quarter of a plantation in the South, the men could be found shaving the women “arranging their frizzy hair, in which they take no little pride, or investigating the condition of their children’s heads” (45). In other words, it was the same then as now with respect to hair care and culture—the only things that have changed are the styles. This paper will discuss the history of African American hair care and culture and show how it has evolved over the years to become what now is today.

The Benefits of Black Hair

One of the best natural qualities about the hair of African Americans in the days of slavery was that the “frizzy, kinky hair” was a natural insulator of the head from the sun’s rays and heat (Byrd, Tharps 1). Hair styles in Africa had been used to convey status, state, age, religion and other cultural aspects. In the New World, the elaborate hair styles used in African were not maintained; the culture of the White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) was primarily impressed upon the slaves and that included how hair was to be worn. Hair care in the South before and after Emancipation in the 19th century was different from the days in Africa, as well. In the South, African Americans did not have access to the kind of combs and herbal treatments they could use in Africa so they had to make do with bacon grease, kerosene or butter as conditioner or as cleaner on the plantations, where slaves did not have regular access to salons in the way whites did (Candelario). Yet their natural hair protected their heads, so taking care of the hair rather than cutting it off was a top priority.

Following Emancipation, free blacks began to find ways to emulate the higher social classes as a way of fitting in. For that reason, changing the nature of the “frizzy, kinky” hair to more reflect the straightness of white hair became a new top priority. To help African Americans pursue that option, Thompson notes that “in the early 1900s, Madam C.J. Walker received a patent for developing the ‘hot comb’ also known as a ‘pressing comb’. This device was the first of its kind to be marketed by a black woman to other black women, and it completely changed the hair game” (Thompson 1). African American men and women both could show off straightened hair that they hoped made them more acceptable in white culture. Yet, the natural qualities of the hair being what they were, anytime their hair came into contact with moisture, it would return back to its natural state; so African Americans were still able to retain a sense of uniqueness and authenticity, which served them especially well in the early 20th century when their musical talents began to catch the notice of the music scene and the first African American leaders in the blues and swing started making waves....

As Patton points out, thanks to their natural qualities, African Americans “have challenged White definitions of beauty” (24)—and their hair has been a big part in that.
By the 1960s, however, the chemical straightener aka “relaxer” was developed and introduced into the market and African American women took to it in droves (Thompson 2). They took not only to straightening their hair with a degree of permanence but also to growing out their hair so that it was long like the hair of white women in the 1970s and 1980s (Tate). It was important for black women to feel “less black” in order to fit in with the white culture for much of the 20th century mainly because there was so much tension between whites and blacks as a result of Jim Crow in the U.S.: as Rooks recollected of her own personal experience, “When I went South for the summer, my grandmother could not get me to Miss Ruby’s beauty parlor and a straightening comb fast enough. She reasoned that because no one was ever going to mistake me for having anything other than African ancestry due to the dark color of my skin ...straightening my hair would give me an advantage in the world. It was one less battle that would have to be fought” (3). It was only following the Civil Rights Movement and the counter-culture revolution of the 1960s and 1970s that African Americans began to demonstrate a desire to stand out and separate themselves from white culture—and hair style was one way of doing that.

Getting Back to the Roots

As musical influences and styles changed and began reaching back to earlier origins, such as Reggae going to the earlier Caribbean days for influences and further to African sources for style and rhythm, African Americans began focusing on styling their appearance to reflect their new focus. This was the case in the latter half of the 20th century especially. As the culture of America changed, so too did the orientation of blacks with regard to feeling like they had to “blend in.”

The Rastafarian hair style is one example of how some African Americans began to view their individuality and unique ethnic history: introduced in the latter half of the 20th century, it was “originally intended to reproduce the 'ethnic' look of some East African tribes” (Hebdige 1264). Hebdige called it “style as homology”—the act of creating a “symbolic fit between the values and lifestyles of a group, its subjective experience and the musical forms it uses to express or reinforce its focal concerns” (1264). The Rastafarian hair style was popular among Bob Marley devotees. Marley grew his hair long into dreadlocks and this symbolized an aspect of authenticity for him and his followers. Various other aspects of their own musical culture were intertwined with this hair style, too, such as smoking marijuana and being passive—i.e., non-violent protestors. During the days of Vietnam, it was important for some to protest but in a non-violent way.

As Rooks notes, hair was a politicized among African Americans, particularly in the 1970s when social and political revolution was happening all over the world. Many African Americans were tired of feeling like they had to belong to or fit in with the…