Untangled from politics, the proud Afro hairstyle rises again

Starla Lewis still remembers her father's reaction almost 50 years ago when she decided to wear her hair natural. She was 18 years old, and she was done using a hot comb to straighten her hair.

"My dad came home and looked at me and said, 'OK, joke's over. Go fix your hair.' And I said, 'Dad, this is the real me,'" Lewis recalls. "He said, 'Do me a favor: If you see me walking down the street, please don't speak.'"

Harsh words.

But in 1968, many black people considered "going natural" to be a radical move, whether that meant styling it in braids, cornrows, or one big puff — the look that became known as the Afro.

"Going natural was a resistance against what had been years of us trying to fit into European-American culture by straightening our hair," says Lewis, professor emerita of black studies at San Diego Mesa College in California. "Going natural was about embracing yourself, loving yourself."

And Lewis loved herself and her "new" hair.

"My family had always hated the natural look, so it was never really an option to adopt it. But I had a friend who had a natural and she looked so cute. And I was at her house and just said, 'You know what? I'm going to do it'," Lewis said. "I went home, washed my hair and just let it be. No pressing. I loved it. I was hooked. I thought: This is me, the real me."

Lewis has worn her hair natural almost continuously since that day in 1968; these days she sports a short Afro. Her daughter and granddaughter also wear natural hairstyles.

She says it took a while for her father to come around, but he eventually did. "I think he realized I wasn't rejecting him. It was about embracing myself."

Today's natural hair is not your father's 'fro. A new generation has joined the natural hair movement and embraced the iconic Afro. Now, the style is relatively free of the political and social implications of the past.

"Back then, a lot of people saw our wearing our hair natural as a rejection of what was deemed socially acceptable. Originally, it was not a style as much as it was an 'unstyle'," says Lori Tharps, co-author of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America. Tharps is an associate professor in journalism at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Social historians trace the start of the trend to students in the civil rights movement, particularly those in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee working and protesting in the South.

Then, the style was borne out of practical concerns.

"Activists found it was hard to maintain a press and curl after being covered in food during sit-ins, sprayed with high-powered water hoses during protest marches, and housed in cramped, humid Southern jails. Many SNCC women started cutting their hair short and wearing it natural," says Tanisha C. Ford, author of Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style and the Global Politics of Soul and an associate professor in black American studies and history at the University of Delaware. Young men in the movement began growing out their hair as well.

Afros became a political symbol, one that spread worldwide. But ironically, that popularity became its undoing.

"By the '70s, it was all about the Afro. And it wasn't a political statement, it was a style. It was a fashion trend, a hairstyle," Tharps says. "You had white people wearing Afros. You had the Jackson 5 and all of these superstars wearing Afros."

Lewis adds, "When it became the Afro, it became more of a hairstyle. It became about this perfectly shaped creation. You had all these products coming out to keep it perfect. Like any fashion trend, it eventually died, and people moved on to the next trend."

In praise of the pick

The pick, or sometimes pik, and the related wide-toothed Afro comb dates back 5,500 years to ancient Egypt.

But who's responsible for the modern versions some remember from childhood or a recent trip to the beauty supply store?

Willie Morrow was a popular barber in San Diego in the 1960s when he noticed an increasing number of his college-age customers growing their hair longer. Then one of his young customers brought in a comb he had purchased in Nigeria while studying there.

"I took a look at this comb. It didn't look like anything else I'd seen. That was the first time I saw a pick," Morrow said.

Morrow started making his own picks out of wood, eventually adding plastic and metal versions. Those creations, along with other hair implements he has collected, were the basis of an exhibit last year, "The History and the Hair Story: 400 Years Without A Comb," at the Museum at California Center for the Arts in Escondido, Calif.

S. Henry Bundles, Jr., whose wife was the granddaughter of black hair-care pioneer Madam C.J. Walker, held one of the first patents for an Afro pick, along with his business partner Henry Childrey.

A'Lelia Bundles said the pick her father and Childrey developed in 1969 for Summit Laboratories came after they saw a comb in San Francisco in the late '60s.

"Everyone was pivoting to take advantage of the Afro and come up with products for that, various sprays and moisturizers and the combs and picks," said A'Lelia Bundles, a journalist.

Today, Antonio's Manufacturing of Cresson, Pa., appears to be king of the pick market. If you have a pick with a fist and peace sign on the handle, it's probably an Antonio's model based on an original design first patented in the early '70s.

Anthony Romani Jr., the son and successor of company founder Anthony Romani, doesn't know why his father came up with that design.

"I do remember a lady called once and asked him why he put the fist and peace sign together," Romani Jr. said. "And he said, 'Well, you have to fight for peace, I reckon.' "