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Black Hair in Bondage: 1400–1899
 
 
The Story Starts in Africa
The story of Black people’s hair begins where everything began—in Africa. Not surprisingly, the birthplace of both astronomy and alchemy also gave rise to a people in perfect harmony with their environment. Indeed the dense, spiraling curls of African hair demonstrate evolutionary genius. Like natural air-conditioning, this frizzy, kinky hair insulates the head from the brutal intensity of the sun’s rays. Of course there is not one single type of African hair, just as there is not one single type of African. The variety of hair textures from western Africa alone ranges from the deep ebony, kinky curls of the Mandingos to the loosely curled, flowing locs of the Ashanti. The one constant Africans share when it comes to hair is the social and cultural significance intrinsic to each beautiful strand.
In the early fifteenth century, hair functioned as a carrier of messages in most West African societies. The citizens of these societies—including the Wolof, Mende, Mandingo, and Yoruba—were the people who filled the slave ships that sailed to the “New World.” Within these cultures, hair was an integral part of a complex language system. Ever since African civilizations bloomed, hairstyles have been used to indicate a person’s marital status, age, religion, ethnic identity, wealth, and rank within the community. In some cultures a person’s surname could be ascertained simply by examining the hair because each clan had its own unique hairstyle. The hairstyle also served as an indicator of a person’s geographic origins. The Kuramo people of Nigeria, for example, were recognized by their unique coiffure—a shaved head with a single tuft of hair left on top. In the Wolof culture of Senegal, young girls who were not of marrying age partially shaved their heads to emphasize their unavailability for courting. Likewise a recently widowed woman stopped attending to her hair for a specified mourning period because she was not meant to look beautiful to other men, and an unkempt coiffure in almost every West African culture was anathema to the opposite sex. Nigerian housewives living in a polygamous society created a hairstyle intended to taunt their husband’s other wives. The style was known as kohin-sorogun (“turn your back to the jealous rival wife”) and was meant to be seen from behind. In ancient times, if a Wolof man wore his hair in a particular braided hairdo it meant he was preparing to go to war and therefore prepared to die. Such a man would then tell his wife she should not comb her hair because in a matter of hours she could become a widow. Traditionally the leaders of a community—men and women—showcased the most ornate hairstyles, and only royalty or the equivalent would be expected to wear a hat or headpiece. “The common people go bareheaded,” wrote French anthropologist Marie Armand Pascal d’Avezac-Macaya when describing the Ijebu people living near the coast of Guinea. “As for the king, his headdress is raised up in the form of a tiara of great richness. It is made of coral beads mounted close together on a background of crimson leather; at the crest is a tuft or tassel of gold braid.”
While the social significance of the hair was weighty for African people, the aesthetic aspects were just as important. “West African communities admire a fine head of long, thick hair on a woman. A woman with long, thick hair demonstrates the life-force, the multiplying power of profusion, prosperity, a ’green thumb’ for raising bountiful farms and many healthy children,” wrote Sylvia Ardyn Boone, an anthropologist specializing in the Mende culture of Sierra Leone. According to Boone, “big hair, plenty of hair, much hair,” were the qualities every woman wanted. But there was more to being beautiful than simply having a lot of hair. It had to be clean, neat, and arranged in a specific style—usually a braided design—to conform to tradition. A particular style could be intended to attract someone of the opposite sex or signal a religious ritual. In Nigeria, if a woman left her hair undone, it was a signal that something was wrong. The woman was either bereaved, depressed, or “habitually dirty.” To the Mende, unkempt, “neglected,” or “messy” hair implied that a woman either had loose morals or was insane. Mohamed Mbodj, associate professor of history at Columbia University and a native of Dakar, Senegal, says that Boone’s description of the Mende’s beauty ideal regarding hair also applied to the Senegalese: “[Wolof] women liked to have their hair shiny and long. And you didn’t cut it, you arranged it.” Mbodj also concurs that an unkempt or disheveled hairdo was often interpreted as a sign of dementia. Men, too, were always expected to keep their locs neat and tidy, whether they wore a short style or an elaborate creation.
The hair’s value and worth were heightened by its spiritual qualities. Both male and female devotees of certain Yoruba gods and goddesses were required to keep their hair braided in a specific style. “The hair is the most elevated point of your body, which means it is the closest to the divine,” Mbodj explains as an indication of the power the hair holds. Because the hair is the closest thing to the heavens, communication from the gods and spirits was thought to pass through the hair to get to the soul. Mbodj also notes that spells could be cast or harm could be brought to another person by acquiring a single strand of their hair. Wolof tradition says that women had the power to make men crazy for them by calling on the power of the genies and spirits in the hair. The hair was thought to be so powerful that medicine men in Cameroon used human hair to adorn the vessels and containers in which they carried their healing potions as a means of protection and added potency.
Because a person’s spirit supposedly nestled in the hair, the hairdresser always held a special place in community life. The hairdresser was often considered the most trustworthy individual in society. The complicated and time-consuming task of hair grooming included washing, combing, oiling, braiding, twisting, and/or decorating the hair with any number of adornments including cloth, beads, and shells. The process could last several hours, sometimes several days. Often the only tools the hairdresser used were a hand-carved wooden comb (specifically designed with long teeth and rounded tips to remove tangles and knots without causing excessive pain), palm oil, and years of creative know-how. In some cultures the hair was groomed by a family member because only a relative could be trusted with such an important task. In the Yoruba tradition, all women were taught how to braid, but any young girl who showed talent in the art of hairdressing was encouraged to become a “master,” assuming responsibility for the entire community’s coiffures. Before a “master” died, she would pass on her box of hairdressing tools to a successor within the family during a sacred ceremony. For the Mende, offering to braid someone else’s hair was a way of asking them to be your friend. Boone writes, “Hair-braiding sessions are a time of shared...