The African American Womans Headwrap: Unwinding the Symbol By: Helen Bradley Griebel THE AFRICAN AMERICAN headwrap holds a distinctive position in the history of American dress both for its longevity and for its potent significations. It endured the travail of slavery and never passed out of fashion. The headwrap represents far more than a piece of fabric wound around the head. This distinct cloth head covering has been called variously head rag, head - tie, head handkerchief, turban, or headwrap. I use 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 form of apparel in the United States, the headwrap has been exclusive to women of African descent. The headwrap originated in sub -Saharan Africa, and serves similar functions for both African and African American women. In style, the African American womans headwrap exhibits the features of sub -Saharan aesthetics and worldview. In the United States, however, the headwrap acquired a paradox of meaning not customary on the ancestral continent. During slavery, white overlords imposed its wear as a badge of enslavement! Later it evolved into the stereotype that whites held of the Black Mammy servant. The enslaved and their descendants, however, have regarded the headwrap as a helmet of courage that evoked 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 their descendants has served as a uniform of communal identity; but at its most elaborate, the African American womans headwrap has functioned as a uniform of rebellion signifying absolute resistance to loss of self -definition. This study examines the multi -layered meanings acquired by the headwrap over several centuries. The intent is to show that the headwrap is African in style; but, as worn by African American women, the traditions regarding its use could only have been forged in the crucible of American slavery and its aftermath. The impetus for this research comes from the comments made by approximately two thousand formerly enslaved African Americans who recounted their experiences and contributed their oral histories to the Federal Writers Project in 1936 to 1938. The result was an abbreviated compendium entitled Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves (B.A. Botkin, Chief Editor, Washington, 1941). Subsequently, George P, Rawick assembled the entire body of material for publication as a forty-volume compilation, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (1972, 1977, and 1979). Hereafter, I cite the Rawick volumes as Narratives. STYLE Tying a piece of cloth around the head is not specific to any one cultural group. Men and women have worn and continue to wear some type of fabric head covering in many societies. What does appear to be culturally specific, however, is the way the fabric is worn; in other words, the style in which the fabric is worn is the ultimate cultural marker. Here, .style is not used to mean a particular fashion. Rather, I use the term to mean a studied way of presenting the self -an idea of how one ought to appear before others. In order to explore this concept, careful note must be taken of the significant difference between the style of cloth head coverings as worn by white women and the headwrap as styled by black women. To wrap her head, a European or white American woman simply folds a square piece of fabric into a triangular shape and covers her hair by tying the fabric under her 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 the head and encloses the face, and thus visually seems to pull the head down. The terms scarf or kerchief usually denote this type of head covering. Scarves are not particularly popular items of white American womens fashion today, but when they are worn, they consistently are arranged in the manner just described.2 By contrast, a woman of African ancestry folds the fabric into a rectilinear shape rather than into a triangle. The most significant difference between the Euro - American and Afro-centric manner of styling the cloth is that rather than tying the knot under her chin, the African American woman usually ties the knots somewhere on the crown of her head, either at the top or on the sides, often tucking the ends into the wrap. Although the 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, by leaving her face open, the headwrap visually enhances the facial features. The African American headwrap thus works as a regal coronet, drawing the onlookers gaze up, rather than down. In effect, African and African American women wear the headwrap as a queen might wear a crown. In this way the headwrap corresponds to African and African American womens manner of hair styling, wherein the hair is pulled so as to expose the forehead and is often drawn to a heightened mass on top of the head. In striking comparison, the scarf worn by white women emulates the way in which the hair of people of European ancestry naturally grows: falling downward and often arranged to cover the forehead. Another outstanding 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 in fabric, African American women exhibit a seemingly endless repertoire of elaborations on the basic mode. One of the earliest extant group photographs of southern African Americans provides striking evidence for this very improvisation on the squared swatch of cloth. In the photo, taken in the early 1860s, the headwraps crafted by both black women and men are far more ornamental than the simple Euro American scarf. Most important, the photo shows twelve newly freed African Americans wearing headwraps in twelve different ways; none, however, tied below the head. HEAD COVERINGS IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH The thirty years before the Civil War is generally considered the antebellum period in American history. Throughout these decades, womens headcoverings served various purposes, just as they have over other historical periods and in other places. In addition to being simple fashion statements, womens head coverings have denoted age and religious beliefs as well as marital, gender and class status. Before focusing on the functions of the antebellum headwrap, it is necessary to look at the backdrop of hat styles favored by European and American white women previous to 1865. African American dress, including head coverings, had elements common to that found in contemporary white America. The assimilation of European-American fashion reflects 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 Africans to improvise and to creatively adopt new materials. Concerning head coverings, black women apparently took their cues from white women, just as white American women through the last century emulated their European counterparts by covering their hair for most public functions, as well as in the home. Enslaved women wore types of head coverings-from simple straw hats to the contemporary fashionable bonnets -that were similar to those worn by white women. At certain events, however, neither white nor black women were expected to cover their heads. At dances, for example, pictorial evidence shows both groups of women with only flowers adorning their hair. Lewis Millers watercolor, Lynchburg-negro dance, 1853, is an African American example. READ MORE OF THIS HISTORY HERE: char.txa.cornell.edu/Griebel.htm
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 18:06:22 +0000
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