A WOMAN SCORNED
White women of slaveholding families were known for meting out vicious punishments, and the shaving of female slaves’ heads was one of the most common for minor transgressions like “talking back.” Many African American women had their heads shaved and “it was almost invariably white women who meted out the punishment.” 22
James Brittian recalled his grandmother, an enslaved woman who had been born in Africa and who had hair that was “fine as silk and hung down below her waist,” hair that made the “Old Miss” jealous of her and the “Old Master.” The mistress, who was “mighty fractious,” had Brittian’s grandmother whipped and her hair cut off. “From that day on,” he recalled, “my grandma had to wear her hair shaved to the scalp.”
There was also the case of one Judge Maddox, owner of a Texas plantation, who “brought home a pretty mulatto girl” with “long black straight hair.” Suspicious that the young slave had not been bought for doing the fine needlework her husband claimed, Madame waited until the judge was away, “got the scissors and cropped that gal’s head to the skull.” 23
White and White note that, generally, it was similarity between their own hair and that of enslaved women that made white women deeply uncomfortable. Hair texture often signified that
husbands, brothers, or sons had been illicitly visiting the slave quarters or suggested that, if something were not done soon, the temptation for them would be too great. As a result of the warped sexual dynamics of an antebellum plantation, the mutilation of an African American female’s hair was usually an action directed at whites rather than at the victim herself, although doubtless its import was not lost on the slaves in the quarter. Whatever the motivations for these incidents may have been, they occurred frequently enough to become part of the remembered fabric of slavery, passed on from generation to generation. In her autobiography Sarah Rice recalled her mother telling her about Sarah Rice’s great-grandmother. As a slave, she had had “gorgeous hair,” which she had styled into ringlets, “[b]ut her mistress didn’t like it and took her and cut it all off.”24
The jealousy and fear that white women felt was deemed serious enough to have a direct impact on legislation. The Tignon Laws, which were signed into being in 1786 by Esteban Rodríguez Miró, the governor of the then Spanish colony of Louisiana, are an explicit demonstration of this. The fabulous, ornate hairstyling of black women was causing much consternation for white women, who felt it bestowed unfair advantages in vying for the attentions of white men. Feelings were running so high that the governor intervened, decreeing that black women must, by law, cover their hair in public on the grounds of maintaining social order. Can you imagine? Black kinks and curls, apparently so jeopardizing to the status quo, attesting to the various levels of social control that have for centuries been enacted upon black women’s bodies. It was decreed that Afro hair now had to be hidden from sight by a tignon, an African-inspired head wrap. Of course, the law failed spectacularly; black women responded by demonstrating their creativity in the face of stricture, sporting elaborate and beautifully decorated head wraps. This served to make them only more alluring to male suitors.
This history was unknown to me. Growing up hating my appearance, it would never have occurred to me that there had once been—and not that long ago—a time, soon to re-emerge—Hello, Kardashian-Jenners!—when white women wanted to look just like me, because that would be crazy. Right??
The shaving of heads was relatively minor; far more terrifying violations existed. I came across one account from Brazil where a white mistress suspected her husband was having sexual relations with an attractive mulatto slave noted for her beautiful eyes. Wifey responded by removing the eyes of her “competitor.” A woman scorned, eh?
Other accounts describe mixed-race house slaves corrupted by proximity to the toxic culture of their captors. They had better clothes, the hand-me-downs of their owners, and they often had better food too, as they might be allowed to eat their owners’ leftovers, but, often separated from black culture, they lacked the cultural resources of those less divorced from their African traditions. For mixed-race slaves, like Margaret Garner, proximity to whiteness, without the protection that whiteness brought, could be nothing less than deadly.
What makes the Garners’ story even more upsetting, if such a thing is possible, is how close Margaret had come to freedom. Nine other escapees who made the journey with the Garner family all got away, disappearing into the free black population. Missouri was a border state during the Civil War and as such was the destination of many black refugees fleeing the unimaginable conditions in the South. Who knows what Annie’s mother, Isabella (Cook) Turnbo, was running from when she too, like Margaret, escaped from slavery in Kentucky, fleeing down the Ohio River with her children. Unlike the Garners, the escape of the Turbos was successful, and they found refuge in Metropolis, Illinois. It was there that Annie was born in 1869, the tenth of eleven children. If, like the Garners, they hadn’t made it, and Annie had never been born, the course of the history of black hair might have been radically altered. It makes you think, doesn’t it, about all the ones who never got away. Who knows what might have been? Who knows what we have lost?
BAD AND BOUJI
Frequent illness meant that Annie didn’t graduate from high school. She did, however, spend enough time in formal education to discover a great aptitude for chemistry. Combined with her interest in haircare, this would eventually lead not only to the development of her own products but to the creation of a huge business empire.
The story behind Annie’s invention is not as dramatic as a secret recipe revealed by an African god, but perhaps it constitutes a more likely origin for the products that would make both Annie and Madam multimillionaires. It is impossible to claim that Madam was selling the product earlier than Annie, but A’Lelia Bundles is keen to emphasize that Annie didn’t invent anything either. Bundles writes that “the real secret was a regimen of regular shampoos, scalp massage, nutritious food, and an easily duplicated, sulfur-based formula that neither of them had originated. Home remedies and medicinal compounds with similar ingredients had been prescribed at least since the sixteenth century.”25
Nonetheless, Annie’s products provided a welcome respite for black women. They were an alternative to the goose and bacon fat, the heavy oils, and God knows what else that damaged both scalp and hair but were relied upon to regulate “unmanageable” kinks.
Annie Malone’s community-based business model developed out of her inability as a black woman to access normal distribution channels (talk about lemons into goddamn lemonade). This success arguably led to her position as the first black female millionaire, a title often accredited to Madam Walker. The truth and the story remain complex. It is reported that it was none other than the savvy Walker who encouraged Annie to copyright her products under the name Poro,* part of a bid to discourage counterfeits and unregulated imitations.
While Madam Walker’s reputation has certainly been more enduring, it remains a matter of dispute which woman was truly wealthier. Madam certainly lived far more lavishly. And why not? She endured backbreaking labor to achieve her status. Madam was a one-woman advertising and promotional tour traversing the US, Cuba, and the Caribbean. Segregation and Jim Crow made such travel around the US extremely risky, but Madam was unstoppable. Five years past working as a washerwoman, she had established an entirely black-owned business, complete with a factory and a beauty school staffed almost entirely by women. By 1912 Jim Crow had become little more than an inconvenience for her. No more filthy trains for Madam—she bought herself a seven-seated touring automobile, complete with chauffeur.