The African American Woman'sHeadwrap: Unwinding the Symbols
By: Helen Bradley Griebel
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THEAFRICAN AMERICAN headwrap holds a distinctive position in the history ofAmerican dress both for its longevity and for its potent signification's. Itendured the travail of slavery and never passed out of fashion. The headwraprepresents far more than a piece of fabric wound around the head.
Thisdistinct cloth head covering has been called variously "head rag,""head-
tie,""head handkerchief," "turban," or "headwrap." Iuse the latter term here. The headwrap usually completely covers the hair,being held in place by tying the ends into knots close to the skull. As a formof apparel in the United States, the headwrap has been exclusive to women ofAfrican descent.
Theheadwrap originated in sub-Saharan Africa, and serves similar functions forboth African and African American women. In style, the African American woman'sheadwrap exhibits the features of sub-Saharan aesthetics and worldview. In theUnited States, however, the headwrap acquired a paradox of meaning notcustomary on the ancestral continent. During slavery, white overlords imposedits wear as a badge of enslavement! Later it evolved into the stereotype thatwhites held of the "Black Mammy" servant. The enslaved and theirdescendants, however, have regarded the headwrap as a helmet of courage thatevoked an image of true homeland-be that ancient Africa or the newer homeland,America. The simple head rag worn by millions of enslaved women and theirdescendants has served as a uniform of communal identity; but at its mostelaborate, the African American woman's headwrap has functioned as a"uniform of rebellion" signifying absolute resistance to loss ofself-definition.'
Thisstudy examines the multi-layered meanings acquired by the headwrap over severalcenturies. The intent is to show that the headwrap is African in style; but, asworn by African American women, the traditions regarding its use could onlyhave been forged in the crucible of American slavery and its aftermath.
Theimpetus for this research comes from the comments made by approximately twothousand formerly' enslaved African Americans who recounted their experiencesand contributed their oral histories to the Federal Writers' Project in 1936 to1938. The result was an abbreviated compendium entitled Slave Narratives: AFolk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves(B.A. Botkin, Chief Editor, Washington, 1941). Subsequently, George P, Rawickassembled the entire body of material for publication as a forty-volumecompilation, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (1972, 1977, and1979). Hereafter, I cite the Rawick volumes as Narratives.
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STYLE
Tyinga piece of cloth around the head is not specific to any one cultural group. Menand women have worn and continue to wear some type of fabric head covering inmany societies. What does appear to be culturally specific, however, is the waythe fabric is worn; in other words, the style in which the fabric is worn isthe ultimate cultural marker. Here, .style" is not used to mean aparticular fashion. Rather, I use the term to mean a studied way of presentingthe self-an idea of how one ought to appear before others. In order to explorethis concept, careful note must be taken of the significant difference betweenthe style of cloth head coverings as worn by white women and the headwrap asstyled by black women.
Towrap her head, a European or white American woman simply folds a square pieceof fabric into a triangular shape and covers her hair by tying the fabric underher chin; or, less often, by tying it at the nape of the neck. In either case,the untied points of fabric are left to fall down over the back of the head.The Euro American style results in a head covering which flattens against thehead and encloses the face, and thus visually seems to pull the head down. Theterms "scarf" or "kerchief" usually denote this type ofhead covering. Scarves are not particularly popular items of white Americanwomen's fashion today, but when they are worn, they consistently are arrangedin the manner just described.2
Bycontrast, a woman of African ancestry folds the fabric into a rectilinear shaperather than into a triangle. The most significant difference between the Euro-American and Afro-centric manner of styling the cloth is that rather than tyingthe knot under her chin, the African American woman usually ties the knotssomewhere on the crown of her head, either at the top or on the sides, oftentucking the ends into the wrap.
Althoughthe African American woman sometimes ties the fabric at the nape of the neck,her form of styling always leaves her forehead and neck exposed; and, byleaving her face open, the headwrap visually enhances the facial features. TheAfrican American headwrap thus works as a regal coronet, drawing the onlooker'sgaze up, rather than down. In effect, African and African American women wearthe headwrap as a queen might wear a crown. In this way the headwrapcorresponds to African and African American women's manner of hair styling,wherein the hair is pulled so as to expose the forehead and is often drawn to aheightened mass on top of the head. In striking comparison, the scarf worn bywhite women emulates the way in which the hair of people of European ancestrynaturally grows: falling downward and often arranged to cover the forehead.
Anotheroutstanding difference between the two ways of wearing the head- wrap is that,in contrast to the singular manner by which white women wrap their hair infabric, African American women exhibit a seemingly endless repertoire ofelaborations on the basic mode. One of the earliest extant group photographs ofsouthern African Americans provides striking evidence for this veryimprovisation on the squared swatch of cloth. In the photo, taken in the early1860s, the headwraps crafted by both black women and men are far moreornamental than the simple Euro American scarf. Most important, the photo showstwelve newly "freed" African Americans wearing headwraps in twelvedifferent ways; none, however, tied below the head.
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HEADCOVERINGS IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH
Thethirty years before the Civil War is generally considered the antebellum periodin American history. Throughout these decades, women's headcoverings servedvarious purposes, just as they have over other historical periods and in otherplaces. In addition to being simple fashion statements, women's head coveringshave denoted age and religious beliefs as well as marital, gender and classstatus. Before focusing on the functions of the antebellum headwrap, it isnecessary to look at the backdrop of hat styles favored by European andAmerican white women previous to 1865.
AfricanAmerican dress, including head coverings, had elements common to that found incontemporary white America. The assimilation of European-American fashionreflects the universal human regard we all have for outward signs of stability;more to the point, it reflects an ability on the part of the displaced Africansto improvise and to creatively adopt new materials. Concerning head coverings,black women apparently took their cues from white women, just as white Americanwomen through the last century emulated their European counterparts by coveringtheir hair for most public functions, as well as in the home. Enslaved womenwore types of head coverings-from simple straw hats to the contemporaryfashionable bonnets-that were similar to those worn by white women. At certainevents, however, neither white nor black women were expected to cover theirheads. At dances, for example, pictorial evidence shows both groups of womenwith only flowers adorning their hair. Lewis Miller's watercolor,Lynchburg-negro dance, 1853, is an African American example.
AfricanAmerican women might also uncover their hair for other occasions. For example,Elsie Clews Parsons, writing earlier in this century, said that South CarolinaSea Islands' "Women, old and young, quite commonly wear kerchiefs aroundthe head and tied at the back" and the hair was wrapped in strings underthe headwrap. Parsons significantly added the point that "often it willnot be combed out until a person is 'going somewhere'" (1923:204).Similarly, Sylvia Boone's 1986 description of modem Mende women in Sierra Leoneshows the headwrap may also serve to protect an African woman's well-groomedhair until it is time to expose it. Boone writes:
...a woman always goes to a man's room with her hair neat; and if she wants tomake a special impression, she will sport a new and elegant style well done.Since the woman would have left her quarters with her head under wraps so thatwill not see her hair, the man will have the flattering feeling that she wentthrough so much time and trouble to fashion herself for his eyes alone. Even inthe mawe compound, when a wife has to walk only a few yards to her husband, shewill follow the rituals of "going to a man's room" and arrive in aheadtie covering her coiffure (189).
Thus,when nineteenth-century enslaved African American women wore hats or bonnets orleft their hair uncovered, they not only conformed to normative customs infashion prevalent for all Western women of the period, but also to an Africanaesthetic. What distinguished the black woman, of course, was that at certaintimes she, alone, donned a headwrap.
Becausethe headwrap is such an outstanding feature of the enslaved women's dress, itis important to note how they acquired them. During the period of enslavement,African American women came by the fabric for their headwraps in various ways.The anonymous Mississippi planter who wrote "Management of Negroes UponSouthern Estates" (1851) noted: "I give to my negroes four full suitsof clothes with two pairs of shoes, every year, and to my women and girls acalico dress and two handkerchiefs extra" (624). The supposition that thewomen wore their "two handkerchiefs extra" as head- wraps issupported by J. C. Fumas who reports that among "(t)he annual issue for200 slaves on the Coffin plantation on St. Helena island, South Carolina ...100 turban hand- kerchiefs" were distributed (1956:94).
Besidesthe head handkerchiefs given to them by plantation "masters". blackwomen supplemented headwraps by other means. Elizabeth Botume gives an example.In 1863, Botume arrived in Beaufort, South Carolina, among the earliest of theNorthern teachers who volunteered to teach black refugees during the "PortRoyal Experiment." Botume wrote of her experiences with the newly"freed" blacks, and her observations offer invaluable, first-handreports of a people who were on the cusp between one way
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oflife and a different one. Botume's description of the people who greeted herboat as it docked at Beaufort contains an itemization of the women's clothes:"Some of the women had on old, cast-off soldier's coats, with 'crocusbags,' fastened together with their own ravellings, for skirts, and bits ofsailcloth for head handkerchiefs" (1893) 1968: 32).
Sincemost cloth was produced domestically, and quite often by black women, remnantsfor headwraps could be procured directly from weavers. Charlie Hudson, who wasborn in 1858, and enslaved in Georgia, remembered: "What yo' wore on yo'haid was a cap made out of scraps of cloth dey wove in de loom right dar on ourplantation to make pants for de grown folks" (Narratives, Vol. 12.2:224).
FrederickLaw Olmstead, a northern white who traveled in the South before the AmericanCivil War, tells of yet another way in which blacks acquired headwraps:"(The negroes) also purchase clothing for themselves, and, I noteespecially, are well sup- plied with handkerchiefs, which the men frequently,and the women nearly always, wear on their heads" (82).
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FUNCTIONS
Althoughthe headwrap became a form of head covering specific to African American women,no clear-cut, single reason accounts for this long-standing item in theirdress. In some instances, whites devised reasons for black women to wear theheadwrap. In other instances, the purposes for donning the headwrap developedfrom within the black communities. No matter where these functions originated,the headwrap worked at several overlapping and sometimes conflicting levelsranging from the symbolic to the utilitarian.
Onesymbolic function of the headwrap was to maintain Southern white power in asociety based economically and socially on racial slavery. Noteworthy in thisrespect are the ordinances which regulated African American dress throughoutthe South during the eighteenth century (Wares, 1981:131-136). In effect,whites used these dress codes to outwardly distinguish those without power fromthose who held it. The earliest, South Carolina's Negro Act of 1735,"specifically set a standard of dress for the enslaved and free AfricanAmericans" (ibid. 132). In 1740 amendments, South Carolina's slave codefurther elaborated the dress regulations (Genovese, 1974:359). In 1786, whileLouisiana was a Spanish colony, the governor enacted a dress code whichforbade: "females of color ... to wear plumes or jewelry"; this lawspecifically required "their hair bound in a kerchief" (Crete, 1981:80-81; also Gayarre, 1885: 178-179 and Wares, 1981:135).
Inthe antebellum period, the Southern whites' concern regarding the symbol- isminherent in the dress of African Americans continued. Citing one instance,Richard C. Wade writes that a Savannah editor bemoaned the"extravagant" dress of city blacks. Wade says that the journalist," observing that a turban or handkerchief for the head was good enough forpeasants,...noted that 'with our city colored population the old fashionedturban seems fast disappearing' " (Savannah Republican 6 June 1849, quotedin Wade, 1981:128-129).
Thepreceding codes and comments show that whites expected the headwrap to mark theblack women's social status as different from that of women in the whitecommunity. In addition, headwraps functioned as status symbols within theAfrican American communities Louis Hughes, born 1843, enslaved in Mississippiand Virginia, noted: "The cotton clothes worn by both men and women (houseservants), and the turbans of the latter, were snowy white" (1897)1969:43). After the family moved to the city, Hughes recalled, "Each ofthe women servants wore a new gay colored turban, which was tied differentlyfrom that of the ordinary servant, in some fancy knot" (42).
Thetype of labor expected of enslaved women offers several purely utilitarianfunctions for wearing the headwrap which was more easily acquired and ofsimpler material than were more ornate millinery items. Ebenezer Brown,enslaved in Mississippi, said: "(My mammy) wrap her hair, and tie it up ina cloth. My mammy cud tote a bucket of water on her head and never spill adrop. I seed her bring that milk in great big buckets from de pen on her headan' never lose one drop" (Narratives, Vol. S1.6.1:249). Brown'sdescription offers one reason why the headwrap was a necessity; for, a thickheadwrap offered protection when carrying loads on the head.
Inthe agrarian South, the headwrap also functioned to absorb perspiration in thesame way that a bandana tied around the neck serves this purpose for farmers orranchers working in the sun. In addition, headwraps protected woman's hair fromgrime. Testimony documents the paucity of bathing facilities available to theenslaved African Americans, as well as the lack of time necessary to keepthemselves groomed and clean. The headwrap also served to keep the frequentinfestations of lice under cover.3
Theheadwrap served in another purely expedient capacity as an article of clothingwhich could be used to cover the hair quickly when there was not adequate timeto make it "presentable." Gloria Goode advances this argument in herrecent dissertation on nineteenth-century African American women ministerswherein she includes a section on the costumes adopted by these women, all ofwhom were "free." Commenting on the biographical portrait of HannahTranks Carson (1864), Goode notes that Carson is shown "in a stereotypicalmanner in homely dress." Goode continues: "Obviously ... if she(Carson) had possessed the strength, she would have discarded the head kerchieffor a bonnet." Goode then presents her rationale for this argument:"The kerchief is an adoption of the black woman's manner of dealing withher 'unpresentable' hair. It is tied in a traditional style covering theforehead" (1990: 388). The novelist Buchi Emecheta demonstrates a recentNigerian example of the Afro-centric taboo against leaving unkempt hairuncovered: "(T)hey saw a young woman of twenty-five, with long hair nottoo tidily plaited and with no head-tie to cover it ... her hair (was) too untidyto be left uncovered..." (1988:8).
Wellinto the twentieth century, the headwrap continued to be used as a convenientlyserviceable item used to cover "unpresentable hair." This isillustrated in the Narratives where a number of the interviews begin with theinterviewer's own narrative
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"pictures"of the interviewees. The following depictions aid in assessing the iconographywhich American whites applied to African American women. The descriptions areof equal importance because they show that seventy years after emancipation,older, southern black women continued to wear some form of hair coveringsimilar to that worn by women during the period of enslavement-and that theheadwrap remained the most common form.
FromGeorgia: "Aunt Fannie Hughes" was seated on the narrow front porchwith two small piccaninnies playing at her feet when we made our visit. Hertall, gaunt figure was clothed in a neat plaid cotton dress ... On her head wasa cloth sugar sack (Narratives, Suppl. Series 1. Vol. 3.1:329).
FromGeorgia: Martha Everettes ... was seated on the front porch of her son's home... Her grizzled hair was covered by a white towel (S1.3.1:236(GA))
FromIndiana, the interviewer paraphrased Callie Bracey's description of her
motherLouise Turrell who had been enslaved in Mississippi: "Louise ... never hada hat, always wore a rag tied over her head" (Narratives, Vol. 6.2:26).
FromGeorgia: Seemingly the only real wide awake person on the place was AuntJemirna, the housekeeper ... brown of complexion, with her kinky hair entirelyhidden by a bright bandana, she was truly a picture (Narratives, Suppl. Series1, Vol. 3.1:339).
FromOhio: Hanna Fambro, a checked gingham turban wound about her head ... presentsthe delightful picture of a real southern mammy (Narratives, Suppl. Series 1,Vol. 5.2:332).
FromGeorgia: A white cloth, tied turban fashion about her (Georgia Baker, 87 years)head ... completed her costume (Narratives, Vol. 12.1:38).
FromAlabama: "Aunt Nicey" had on a blue dress, with a white head rag... (Narratives,Suppl. Series 1, Vol. 1:297).
FromMississippi: Her (Chaney Moore Williams, b. ca. 1852, d. 1937) hair was
grayand worn in small twists, her head was tied in a large "head rag"(Narratives, Suppl. Series 1, Vol. 10.5:2304).
FromGeorgia: Her (Callie Elder, 78 years) crudely fashioned blue dress was
ofa coarse cotton fabric and her dingy head rag had long lost its original color(Narratives, Vol 12.1:306).
FromGeorgia: Camilla Jackson wears a white rag around her head and is alwaysspotlessly clean (Narratives, Vol. 12.2:295).
FromMississippi: Harriet Walker, (b. ca. 1852) ... is about eighty-five years of
age,and is a typical "black mammy" type ... She wears a large cloth tiedneatly and snugly around her head, which is called a "head rag" bythe negroes (Narratives, Suppl. Series 1, Vol. 10.5: 2157).
FromGeorgia: A large checkered apron almost covered her (Lulu Battle) dress and aclean white headcloth concealed her hair (Narratives, Vol. 12.1:61).
FromGeorgia: Her (Julia Bunch, 85 years) head closely wrapped in a dark bandana,from which the gray hair peeped at intervals forming a frame for her face(Narratives, Vol. 12.1:155).
MargaretDavis Cate, observing African Americans on the Georgia Sea Islands in the1930s, wrote:
Fashionscome and go, but Sibby (Kelly) never changed from the old-fashioned method oftying up her head. A piece of white cloth folded smoothly above the foreheadand tied in the back with the ends hanging down on the back of the neck was theproper method and she stuck to it (Cate, 1955: 195, photograph on facing page).
Thepreceding glosses by white observers offer a clear picture of the headwrap asan outstanding item of dress for Southern black women, but these comments alsoreflect that the headwrap provided an important material symbol by which whiteshave long stereotyped black women.
Inaddition to white-enforced dress codes, and the headwrap's more practical uses,under specific conditions, headwraps also functioned as significant additionsto southern African American religious ceremonies during the last century. ANew Orleans journalist reported on a "voodoo rite" that he witnessedin 1828. "Some sixty people were assembled, each wearing a white bandanacarefully knotted around the head..." (Crete, 1981:172). At a given momentin the ceremony, one of the women "tore the white hand- kerchief from herforehead. This was a signal, for the whole assembly sprang forward and enteredthe dance" (173).
Headwrapswere included as one of the several special head coverings worn for moreordinary Christian religious events. The interviewer paraphrased EdwardLycurgas (enslaved in Florida): "Lycurgas recalls ... the river baptisms!These climaxed the meetings ... All candidates were dressed in white gowns,stockings and towels would be about their heads bandana fashion"(Narratives, Vol. 17.1:209). John Dixon Long, a white observer, remarked on aprayer-meeting held by enslaved people in Maryland in 1857.
Ata given signal of the leader, the men will take off their jackets, hang uptheir hats, and tie up their heads in handkerchiefs; the women will tightentheir turbans, and the company will then form a circle around the singer, andjump and bawl to their heart's content ... (Long, Pictures of Slave7y in Churchand State...,383, quoted to Epstein, 1963:387).
Womenmight wear headwraps for Sunday worship. Louis Hughes, born 1832, enslaved inMississippi and Virginia, remembered "once when Boss went to Memphis andbrought back a bolt of gingham for turbans for the female slaves. It was a redand yellow check, and the turbans made from it were only to be worn onSundays" (1897) 1969:42). Fanny Kemble's description of the"grotesque" Sunday costume of the .poor" enslaved people on herhusband's Georgia plantation included: "head handkerchiefs, that put one'svery eyes out from a mile off..." (1863:93).4
Incertain areas, customs related to head coverings for the religious campmeetings denoted the age of the women. For example, Gus Pearson, enslaved inSouth Carolina, remembered:
(Degals) took dey hair down out'n de string fer de (camp) meeting. In dern daysall de darky wimmens wore dey hair in string 'cep' when dey 'tended church or awedding. At de camp meetings de wimmens pulled off de head rags, 'cept demammies. On dis occasion de mammies wore linen head rages fresh laundered(Narratives, Vol. 2.2:62).
Thelast function to be examined returns us to the symbolic-this time, to the
symbolicfunctions given the headwrap by African American women. In this case, someAfrican American women played with the white "code" and, by flauntingthe headwrap, converted it from something which might be construed as shamefulinto an -anti-style uniquely their own.
Thisparticular function may be analyzed by examining a portrait painted by AdolphRinck in 1844. Some scholars believe the subject was Marie Laveau, the famousvoudon priestess of New Orleans. The portrait dates from the time when the NewOrleans dress code legally required African American women (whether enslaved or"free") to wear some form of headwrap; but the painting's sitter tookadvantage of this supposed badge of degradation and transformed it into anemblem of self-determination and empowerment. The portrait shows a woman whom*ost certainly was quite aware of how to style her "tignon" away fromher face and high up on her head.5
Ifother black women wore the headwrap with less self-conscious concern for daringfashion than did Laveau, and with more concern for its utilitarian functions,nevertheless, they continued to wear it in particularly innovative ways, andalways to wear it tied up and away from the face. In this manner, AfricanAmerican women demonstrated their recognition that they alone possessed thisparticular style of head ornamentation and thereby, donning the headwrap meantthey were acknowledging their membership in an unique American social group.Whites misunderstood the self-empowering and defiant intent and saw theheadwrap only as the stereotypic "Aunt Jemima" image of the blackwoman as domestic servant. This represents a paradox in so far as the headwrapacquired significance for the enslaved women as a form of self and communalidentity and as a badge of resistance against the servitude imposed by whites.
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ANAFRICAN WOMAN'S VOICE, 1992
CassandraStancil was born in 1954, and grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia.6 The mostvisible feature of Cassandra's dress is her headwrap which, as she says, shewears "more days out of the week than not". Cassandra uses two termsfor the headwrap: if she purchases a finished scarf to wrap her head, she callsit a "scarf"; if she wraps it with an unfinished cloth, she callsthis a "rag." She notes "Usually when people are talking to meabout it, they call it a 'wrap.'" Cassandra calls the different ways shestyles the headwrap "variations." The shape of the cloth is onedetermining factor for how she wears it; that is, the style of wrap depends onwhether the fabric is "oblong or square." Fabric size is the otherfactor.
Itvaries-you could just use a big bandana to get a look, you know, if you justwant something like a headband around your head. Or, if you really want to wrapand have fun with it, at least a couple of yards. If it is a short oblongpiece, say about a yard long, that is more limiting.
Threecultural influences converge in Cassandra's choice of head covering. First,Cassandra consciously adopted the headwrap to mark her place as a modernAfrican American and in recognition of black women who wore it in the past;here, the influence is African American. Second, as Cassandra explained herrationale for not wearing the headwrap in certain situations, the influence is"American" and, again, conscious. The third influence is Cassandra'ssubconscious heritage from Africa and concerns the particular way she stylesher headwraps. In the following, Cassandra voices these conscious andsubconscious values.
First,the African American cultural values. The headwrap represents the most overtand visible material manifestation of Cassandra's decision to identify herselfas an African American. Confrontations with other black women have occurredconcerning her headwrap, but Cassandra maintains her own personal sense of selfas she wears the head- wrap no matter what negative connotations others may seein it.
Iremember my mother wrapping her head every night and when I'd come to her inthe morning she had it wrapped. And when she's out in the yard, her hair iswrapped. But once she leaves the confines of that yard, the wrap's off.
Mymother is of a different generation and to her way of thinking to wear aheadwrap is a kind of signal. She'll wear it in her house, not in public. It'snot proper, more of a household thing. For her, it's not so formal, it wouldjust be a rag tied around the head. Not respectable, not proper to go in the publiceyes.
I'venever cared about what people thought. And there are still fights today with mymother and I-about how I dress-not just about how I wrap my head-how I dress.
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Forsome women today, it seems-let's begin with where I come from-hats on the beadare the thing if you want to consider yourself dressed. And I've seen someolder women wearing fancy headwraps on occasions where they generally in thepast might have worn a hat-to church, to social functions.
Thisis getting personal here-but one of the reasons-early on, and this is going wayback in my history, say in the (early) 70s when I was wearing (head- wraps),like college and high school- and I remember friends commenting to me, 'Youlook like Aunt jemima'-and I guess that is what my mother might have had inmind, that was what she thought other people were seeing, and she took that asa critique that she really did not want aimed at her, so that she did not wearthem in public. Again, I never cared, number one, about how other peopleperceived it and number two, I never thought it was necessary to distancemyself from Aunt Jemima. I never considered her to be a negative person, it'sjust a stereotype that she represents is negative, so I don't have thatproblem.
It'smore of a reclaiming of my southern heritage, it's not necessary going back toAfrica. It's more valorizing the southern women that I know and still know whodid this. It's like putting myself in the same boat with them which I don'thave a problem with.
Cassandrawore a headwrap "on and off" from the early 1970s until 1989,
whenshe entered the University of Pennsylvania as a graduate student and decided towear it anywhere and anytime and on any occasion. Earlier, she wore itdepending on her place of work and mentioned that when she had a governmentjob, a different sort of attire was expected. Here Cassandra acknowledges thesecond set of cultural standards which informed her decisions as to theappropriateness of wearing or not wearing the headwrap. These standards are"American", and perhaps ultimately derive from a different andEuro-centric system for coding dress.
It'saccording to the kind of interactions. (Entering Penn) was the time I felt mostfree. Not confined by my work situation or the people that I would beencountering in the work situation.
WhereI've worked-I've been in rural parts of middle America-while on the one hand Icould have chosen to play up the exoticism, I've never wanted to do that.
Whenasked why she always wears the headwrap tied up and on her head, and
notjust tied under the chin, Cassandra clearly displayed a knowledge about theeffect it produces in the way she styles it. just as clearly, however,Cassandra's answers demonstrate that she is completely unaware of the fact thather particular style in applying the headwrap is decidedly African, the thirdcultural marker.
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Itnever occurred to me-but it wouldn't feel comfortable and I don't know- wedon't wear-I'm thinking maybe-I mean, when you're a child you wear a hat tiedunder your chin to keep it on your head. Maybe that's a part of it. Ummm. Butit looks dressy to me, when, you know, it's all on my head. To me, it's thesame effect as if I had elaborate braids on my head, if I had the head wraptied above my head and knotted above my head or had the ends worked into theactual wrap.
Numerousscholars recognize improvisation as a hallmark of Africa and African Americanperformance style. In fact, improvisation is fundamental to the African andAfrican American concept of successful communication in all its forms-fromspeech, to song, to instrumental music, to dance, to dress.
CassandraStancil: No, I never asked another woman how she tied it. I always figured Icould do it. I could try and experiment and if not get that, get some- thingthat I liked.
It'smore an aesthetic thing, I've never looked it up. As I'm wrapping, I'm lookingin the mirror to see what it looks like. And sometimes I'll go for somethingsymmetrical, sometimes asymmetrical. Sometimes I'll let the ends be out,sometimes I'll tuck them up, sometimes I'll braid them so that they have somekind of a design and then I'll tuck them under, sometimes I'll want to hide howI've made them so I make sure everything's tucked under, and then sometimes Idon't care, I want them out, and like, when I have a really short piece thatwill really just barely go around my head, I'll just go with the Aunt Jemimalook and just let the knot be there-If it's up in front it's the Aunt Jemimalook.
Thus,the seemingly limitless ways of attaching a piece of cloth to the head may beread as yet another expression of African aesthetic style, that ofimprovisation.
Anotherprimary characteristic of African and African American performative style iscall-and-response wherein no clear lines are drawn between the roles of"per- former" and "audience" as is often the expectation inEuro-centric performance (see; e.g. Allen, 1991: 85ff and Davis, 1987: 16fo.From an Afro-centric perspective, a successful performance demands audienceresponse. The expectation is for both performer and audience to play roles, andthis includes such an event as the wearing of a particular item of clothing.
CassandraStancil: I do get positive responses-and I don't know if I could categorizethem. Yah-and it's generally in cultural settings, I guess, or at Penn I get alot of responses, or when I go to other events where other people are dressedaccordingly. But you know, if I'm in an environment where there's a greater"division" in points of view, then I don't get the responses at all.Having worn them so often, other women asked me how to wear them.
AsAfrican American communities in the South broke asunder with Emancipation,Reconstruction, and the Great Migration, the headwrap became, howeverconsciously or unconsciously, one material link by which those women who cameafter could acknowledge a bond with those who preceded them.
CassandraStancil: It's kinda like the way we have, in the 60s, reappropriated the term"black" which was once pejorative, and once we reclaimed it and woreit as our banner, it became okay for us to call ourselves "black."Similarly, I see the same thing happening with headwraps and it may happen withbraids, we've sort of taken back those, those, like-to have a "nappedhead" is how we use to call having dread-locks now, and it was verynegative. 8 To have braids, that was something that only a child wore, but nowit's something that older black women wear, and it's something we realize thatit's something we have done in the past with our hair, whether or not it wasthe southern past or the African past, and it's something that is conducive tothe way our hair is. So that now we wear it with those things in mind, sort ofreappropriated it and used it to signify something different. And I guessthat's how I would categorize how I see most people wearing them now. We havereappropriated it from the stereotypic views of it-we've reappropriated it fromthose who would say 'it's primitive' and so forth-and we valorized it, I think.
Today,the headwrap as emblematic of this bond seems to encompass not only theenslaved American ancestors, but those who remained in Africa as well. When Iasked Cassandra if there were occasions, such as African American festivals,where any black women might wear a headwrap, she responded:
Definitely.Definitely. I mean those are the parts, I mean those are the ways that we haveto re-incorporate the African dress into our everyday or fun-type dress...
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CONCLUSION
Duringthe period of enslavement, whites enacted codes that legally required blackwomen to cover their heads with cloth wrappings, but these codes do not explainthree other functions for the headwrap devised by the African Americansthemselves. One pur- pose was purely practical: the cloth covered their hairwhen there was lack of time to prepare it for public view, the materialabsorbed perspiration and kept the hair free of grime during agriculturaltasks, and the headwrap offered some protection against lice. Two additionalfunctions-fashion and symbol-often overlapped. Within the African communities,the headwrap denoted sex, marital status, and the sexuality of the wearer.
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Theseinstances show that although the headwrap marked the social status of thewearer within the larger American society, the headwrap marked the wearer's statuswithin black communities as well. For example, enslaved African American womenpracticed customs wherein certain types of headwraps were worn for specialsocial events and for religious worship services, baptisms, and funerals.
Inthese usages, African American women demonstrated their recognition that theyalone possessed their particular style of head ornamentation and thereby,donning the headwrap, meant they were acknowledging their membership in aunique American social group. For the enslaved women, the headwrap acquiredsignificance as a form of self and communal identity and as a badge ofresistance against the servitude imposed by whites. This represents a paradoxin so far as the whites misunderstood the self-empowering and defiant intent andsaw the headwrap only in the context of the stereotypical "Auntjemima" image of black women as domestic servant.
Afteremancipation, the headwrap became a private matter possessing closely heldmeanings which were evident but mostly subconscious. In the 1970s, the headwrapre-emerged as an item of clothing worn publicly by some black women. When thehead- wrap reappears, a white audience senses the true contradiction in theoriginal paradox; it evokes the white's role in the system of slavery. Whilethe headwrap still bears this metaphor for modem African Americans, it alsorepresents a symbolic embrace of their enslaved American forebears; and, it nowserves yet another function as an emblem of their West African ancestry. Thus,over time, the headwrap displays a dynamic quality in gathering new meaningsand shedding older nuances.
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NOTES
i.Bernard S. Cohn, 1991, uses the phrase "uniform of rebellion" in hisargument for the meaning of the turban to modem Indian Sikhs (304).
2.Although they are less often seen in the United States at present, Europeanpeasant women engaged in household and agricultural tasks continue to wear sucha hair covering. And, in Greece, it is still customary for widowed, rural womento cover their hair in public with a dark-colored scarf. For whatever purposes,when white women wear head scarves today, they always tie them in theEuro-centric style.
3.So prevalent were lice that they gave their name to a type of handwoven clothbecause it resembled the ever-present pests. Clara Walker, enslaved inArkansas, said: "Den I weaves nits and lice. Wat's dat-well you see it waskind corse cloth de used for clothes like overalls. It was sort of speckeldyall over-dat's why dey called it nits and lice" (Narratives,Vol. 11.7:22).
4.Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble (1809-1893) was a British actress who made herAmerican acting debut in New York City. Although an ardent abolitionist, Kemblemarried Pierce Butler, slave-holder and co-owner of a large plantation off theGeorgia coast. Butler, an absentee landowner, resided in Philadelphia, but in1838-1839, he brought his wife for a visit to the Georgia plantation. In 1863,Kemble's impressions of this sojourn were published. Kemble is a complexcharacter. She exhibits a strong compassion for the enslaved, particularly thewomen; interwoven with these assets, however, Kemble's writings also show thatshe judged African Americans from a Euro- centric perception that they were inneed of "civilizing."
5.Tignon is a local, New Orleans word for the headwrap, a variation on the Frenchword, chignon (Campbell, ed., 1991:x). Chignon means a smooth knot or twist orarrangement of hair that is worn at the nape of the neck.
6.Because I wanted to understand what the headwrap means to a contemporaryAfrican American woman, I requested an interview on the subject with CassandraStancil who graciously consented. The following quotations are excerpts fromour taped conversation on 27 March 1992, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
7.When I asked Ella Williams Clarke, age 70, who was reared in North Carolinaabout wearing a headwrap she said, "We always wore hats and gloves tochurch when I was growing up. When you were a teenager you wore a hat-noteverywhere, but always to church." Conversation, 10 Sept. 1992.
8.In Ghana, Maya Angelou describes her similar reaction when a local woman gaveher a Ghanaian hairstyle: "It was a fashion worn by the pickaninnies whosephotographs I had seen and hated in old books. I was aghast" (1986:37).
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