Heady Times - African Americans, in the 1960s and 1970s, began using hairstyles that featured their natural hair

American Visions, Oct, 1999 by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor

These are "hairitage" tales, tales from "black in the day," when we wore our tresses like identity badges--the 1960s and '70s. It was a heady time for kinky-haired people. "Shoot," says my friend Earlene. "People talk about having a bad-hair day; nappy-headed people have had bad-hair years."

For generations we were told that kinky hair was "bad hair," and we did all that we could to make our hair good. Countless dollars, straightening combs, pressing irons, vats of grease, pounds of lye, and hours of frustration were spent on subduing kinky hair.

The very idea of not doing anything to get rid of the naps was revolutionary. Millions (well, at least hundreds of thousands) of colored people proudly sporting their unrefined hair was one of the great rebellions of the 20th century. We called it the bush, the natural and the Afro.

The don't-be-'shamed-to-show-your-kinky-hair concept was the same, even though each person's hair was different. As Earlene points out: "We don't like to talk about it, but all Afros were not equal. The `grade' of hair you had depended on your European and African bloodline. And it was that grade that determined whether your Fro was as tall as the Watts Towers or as close to your head as 99 is to a 100."

Brenda Wilson, my colleague at National Public Radio, was a college student when she saw her first Afro. "I saw a woman in Lexington, Va., who was obviously from someplace like New York because she looked so sophisticated," Brenda recalls. "Washington and Lee University at the time was pretty much--well, primarily--a white school, and there she was. I was with a bunch of college kids--actually, I think I was the only black person in the group--and the others looked at her and said, `Ugh. She looks like a boy.'

"But I thought, She looks really cool. I'm gonna get me one of those. And I have worn a natural ever since."

Sifting through my own recollections, I think that the first time I saw an Afro was on a night I went to see Odetta perform. I thought she looked beautiful. But it was a while before I did it.

Lest we forget, wearing an Afro sometimes represented more than an individual choice. Your hairstyle could affect your personal, professional and social lives. Many whites were intimidated by prideful, bushy-headed blacks. There were also many blacks who were down with the civil rights struggle but hostile to anyone in their families who protested by wearing their hair nappy.

When Brenda was heading back to school with her close-cropped Afro, her mother admonished, "You're not going to let those white people see your hair like that!"

Truth be told, before the Afro, lots of kinky-haired folks didn't appreciate white, black or any other group of people seeing their hair like that! "Don't let nobody peep your naps" was the mantra.

Urban legend has it that when the natural appeared, some preachers spoke from the pulpit on the evils of the hairstyle and of those who wore it.

When we had our hair done at the beauty shop, many of us requested that it be done behind a curtain so that others wouldn't know how much kink we had. We wouldn't swim because water would seep into the bathing cap and make our hair "go back." We were forever "touching up" the naps in our kitchens--and you know I'm not talking about the kitchen with a stove in it.

Even men sprinted to the barbershop the minute they thought their hair was getting "beady."

But if it takes "practice, practice, practice" to get to Carnegie Hall, it took maintenance, maintenance, maintenance to wear the Afro, the natural, the bush. The tools used to coif the Afro transformed the language: picks, rakes, cake cutters. Some barbers and hairdressers went out of business because they could not handle the metamorphosis.

Washington, D.C., barber Nathaniel Mathis knew what to do. He became the Bush Doctor. And earlier this year, Mathis' impressive arsenal of Afro memorabilia--notably, his patented leather barber's vest designed to hold his tools--became official Americana when the Smithsonian Institution took the items into its collection.

The Bush Doctor always felt confident that he could work with any hair texture. To prove it, he once created "the perfect Afro" for a blonde (pre-Dennis Rodman) client on live television. He removed the sponges from a set of rollers, wrapped the hair around the rods, and voila: an Afro! Today he recalls that people were so amazed to see a white woman with an Afro that his phone rang off the hook.

It was not only white women with straight hair who visited the Bush Doctor. As the style grew more popular, his clientele expanded, including colored folks whose hair couldn't kink up. Those without access to a doctor used various home concoctions. Vinegar was said to be the most effective "kinker."

Many of us possess fond Afro memories. I heard one story about a young boy who lived in France. His mother was French and his father, African American. One summer, the boy visited the United States to meet his African-American relatives. When he returned to Paris, his parents weren't sure quite how much he had learned about his heritage, but from then on, he brandished a pick in his pocket.