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During slavery much of the service work was within the realm of
African Americans.
They were confined and restricted to this particular area of the economy largely because:
one,
that's the work that slaves did and white folks didn't want to do work that resembled the work that slaves did, and, so,
barbering comes out of that larger tradition. Barbers began as personal servants to to their masters who certainly
shaved them took care their coats, in some cases were their valets and certainly
through that enslaved men would use barbering to get off the plantation.
So in down turning economies masters would hire out their skilled slaves to earn some extra money and
barbers took advantage of this. So barbers were often among the slaves who were hired out and this gave them mobility.
They were able to, in some cases, set up shop in the city
and with the earnings from their barbering work,
they had to send a portion of it back to their master. And certainly this gave them the space
away from the plantation away from the surveillance of their masters to build some income
but also,
space to escape in many ways and many of them did but these were enslaved men hired out who were working with free black
barbers, so you have free blacks and slaves sort of working together. So free blacks are higher
enslaved men from white masters. This relationship between
barbers as owners but also as employees and as free men and enslaved sort of develops during the antebellum period. But certainly after
slavery after emancipation
African Americans still sort of took advantage of the process of shaving white men
and so they maintained that
practice. And so in thinking about what they had to give up the ways in which race was infused in the service economy
and so black men took advantage of that and they get rich doing it and so barbers, like John
Merrick from Durham who was the Duke's barber of the tobacco magnates and he again got rich shaving them and
he went on to found the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company
which still exists. Alonzo Herndon out of Atlanta another sort of new south barber
he used the profits from his barbering business to go on to found the Atlanta Life Insurance Company
and there are other barbers who were situated like
Merrick and Herndon.
Beginning in the 1890s, a new generation of African Americans entered
barbering. They were not as connected to whites as their predecessors were and so they
decidedly opened barber shops in black communities. This is the same time that Jim Crows on the rise,
Jim Crow is being codified, African Americans are being restricted and confined to particular areas of cities and so
African American men opened barber shops in black communities to tailor to black consumers.
It's not until the great migration that these shops become hubs of
activity. If we look at the migration and then look at the Great Depression, we see that these are two
historical moments where African Americans particularly had to come together collectively.
When someone moved north one of the biggest questions that they had was: Where do I go? Where do I live?
Where do I eat?
Where can I find a job? And so the Urban League certainly helped in that regard but on a sort of a less formal basis
barbershops helped in that regard because barbers were situated within the communities.
They would see various constituencies of men both middle-class, working-class, and unemployed coming through their shops
and they can tell a new arrival
what church they might want to go to or what area they might want to look for
an apartment in and also but thinking about the Great Depression again a time where you know folks didn't have jobs
needed some help and sometimes just needed a space just to decompress and
barbershops in many cases provided that space to decompress. Barbershops provided this space of community and
congregation at times when things were hard
but also at times when things were good too. Black men
went to you and I think and I argue still go to black barbershops
because of the production of black culture that happens in this space. The performance and production of black masculinity
cannot happen in white barbershops that has to happen in places like black barber shops
and so black men go to black barbershops because they want to be around black people and there's nothing wrong with that.
There's something I think very empowering and endearing about that as well.
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