Tressed with pride

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As moviegoers delight in the sassy coiffures and quips of Queen Latifah's ""Beauty Shop," a new exhibit is exposing the roots of the complex and often painful legacy of black American hair care.

"Hair and history are intertwined for African Americans like they are for no other people," Cheryl Morrow says in an interview. A hair historian, Miss Morrow is the daughter of noted black hair care expert Willie Morrow, whose 1973 book "400 Years Without a Comb" supplies the theme for "African American Beauty: A Journey Through Time," a traveling exhibit on display through month's end at Howard University's Armour J. Blackburn Center.

"The 400 years represent our years in slavery, when we weren't allowed to groom our hair," Miss Morrow says of the book and the exhibit. "It is the time in our long history when our standards of beauty were stripped away."

Today, images of black women wearing all manner of styles are commonplace -- the cascading flaxen locks of pop diva Beyonce, the natural curls of singer Macy Gray or the cropped androgynous fade of model-actress Grace Jones. Maintaining such styles has meant big business, with sales of ethnic hair care products topping $218 million in 2004 at supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers (excluding Wal-Mart), according to the Household and Personal Products Industry (HAPPI), citing data obtained from the Chicago-based Information Resources Inc.

Yet beyond aesthetics and commerce lies a conflicted chronology.

Blacks with straight, free-flowing tresses were idealized by some in their communities as having "good" hair, a trait often rewarded by preferential treatment. Years later, style rather than texture caused divisions both in and outside the race. Despite the mass popularity of the beaded cornrows worn by actress Bo Derek in the 1979 movie "10" -- a style created by blacks centuries ago -- several companies fired workers for wearing the intricate braids or other natural styles deemed unsuitable.

"It's about presenting a legacy of truth, suffering and surviving," Mr. Morrow says of his exhibit. "If nothing more, I would like to see our children become proud of themselves and proud of their hair. It doesn't matter whether it's curly or straight."

Those who perused the collection at the Blackburn Center were by turns fascinated and heartsick while taking in the antique curling irons, rare photographs and little-known facts. There are success stories -- for example, of pioneering entrepreneurs Madame C.J. Walker (the daughter of slaves) and Annie Tumbo Malone, whose shampoos and oil and wax potions revolutionized black hair care and made both women multimillionaires in the early years of the 20th century.

There are gut-wrenching tales, too, including accounts of the damage caused by harsh lye-based hair-straightening products and the indignities of slavery. Fearing their sale to another plantation owner, older slaves often used axle grease to camouflage the gray hairs that crept outside their head wraps, one display explains. Another features graphic photos of scalp disease and hair loss caused by the lack of grooming.

"Slaves were prohibited from combing their hair, so they kept it wrapped to prevent tangling," says Mr. Morrow, a celebrated hairstylist for more than 40 years whose celebrity clientele has included actress-singer Vanessa Williams; Martin Luther King and his wife, Coretta Scott King; and the late Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson.