The history of Black Hair

For thousands of years Africans know no other skin colour or hair type besides their own. Their beauty-enhancing tools, such as the afro-comb, were designed for a world of black people with tight wooly hair.

The ancient African woman wore her hair with pride. It was common for her to have her hair looked after in a grand manner. The particular hairstyles and adornments were often a reflection of the customs of her tribe or of her family traditions. Friends, or elements, could easily identify the members of a tribe, or of individual families within the tribe, by the manner in which they wore their hair. African women would decorate their hair with bits of gaily coloured cloth, put in wild flowers, and sometimes trim the sides and back of their hair, leaving just a tuft on top of the head, very much like a bouquet. In some tribes clay was applied and matted in. The resulting hairstyle would look like a stone carving.

Competition between the tribes would entail the creation of remarkably elaborate hairstyles in their efforts to outdo others. This sort of rivalry fostered pride in the individual and the tribe as a whole. The beauty of the hair was an essential part of the African culture. The people of Dahomey, the Ashanti and the Yoruba were only some of the tribes where the care of the hair and its beautification was developed into a fine art.

Then came slavery. The Atlantic Slave Trade resulted in the forced migration of millions of Africans to the Caribbean and the Americas. One of the first things done to captured slaves was to cut off their hair. The slaves were allowed no possessions, including their afro-combs, and so an important symbol of their culture and their heritage of beautification was lost. Amongst the array of physical and psychological deprivations these people were subjected to, we need to remember the social-psychological importance of the comb. Freedom, dignity and a sense of self worth were lost with the comb.

During slavery, the females were not allowed any time to look after their hair as they once had. But black slave women used their imagination and found new ways to style their hair. For instance, they would have noticed how irons used to press clothes, previously unknown to them, could perhaps be useful for straightening their hair. Below are other examples of how versatile their imaginations were when it came to treating and styling their hair:

1. Towels were heated by the fireside and then wrapped around the hair to help straighten it.

2. Flat tongs were placed in the fireside. These hot tongs were then used to squeeze the hair and to form it.

3. Eating forks were heated in the fireside. They were held by the handle with a cloth and combed through the hair pressing it.

4. A piece of metal would be shaped by a blacksmith and used as a straightening comb. The piece of metal was put in a tin can and placed in the fireside. A piece of cloth was then wrapped around the handle and the women would comb this through the hair pressing it.

5. The women would use thread from the feed bags to wrap the hair to keep it from tangling and from matting.

6. The African practice of braiding became corn rowing in the Americas.

7. The women would use the lard of grease from the kitchen and hot tallow to grease their hair, in order to make it more manageable.

8. Hand-held hackles were wooden cards with metal teeth that were used to treat wool before it was spun into yarn. Slave women used them to comb their hair and called them Jim Crow cards.

Contributed by Dr Neil Persadsingh. He is the author of the book ‘The hair in black women.‘