Before Black Was Beautiful © 2017
Part 1
“Black is Beautiful” wasn’t just a catchy phrase. On the contrary, it was the main theme in a cultural revolution that began in the 1960s. Before then, black was not deemed beautiful by outsiders or by Blacks. If you called a black person “black” back then, you probably had a fight on your hands. Black was anything but a good thing.
Back then, we were called and answered to “negro” and “colored.” But as an outgrowth of the cultural revolution, former negroes, themselves, changed the narrative. Though they once cringed at being called, “black,” they now embraced and insisted on being called black.
One of the more obvious examples of our acceptance of being “black” was in how we wore our hair.
Before black was beautiful, the most famous black male entertainers in the world wore what was called a “processed” hairstyle. The so-called “process” involved Black men applying a chemical straightener to their hair to make it resemble a white person’s hair.
To see old pictures of black men with “processed” hair back then is embarrassing and is an indication of just how psychologically damaged Blacks were. But the cultural revolution faded, as the former Stokely Carmichael said, because we were “mobilized but not organized.” Let us learn the difference.
The following and a long list of other prominent black males processed their hair before “Black Was Beautiful.”
• James Brown
• Malcolm X
• Marvin Gaye
• Miles Davis
• Samuel Cooke
• The Isley Brothers
• The Miracles
Part 1
“Black is Beautiful” wasn’t just a catchy phrase. On the contrary, it was the main theme in a cultural revolution that began in the 1960s. Before then, black was not deemed beautiful by outsiders or by Blacks. If you called a black person “black” back then, you probably had a fight on your hands. Black was anything but a good thing.
Back then, we were called and answered to “negro” and “colored.” But as an outgrowth of the cultural revolution, former negroes, themselves, changed the narrative. Though they once cringed at being called, “black,” they now embraced and insisted on being called black.
One of the more obvious examples of our acceptance of being “black” was in how we wore our hair.
Before black was beautiful, the most famous black male entertainers in the world wore what was called a “processed” hairstyle. The so-called “process” involved Black men applying a chemical straightener to their hair to make it resemble a white person’s hair.
To see old pictures of black men with “processed” hair back then is embarrassing and is an indication of just how psychologically damaged Blacks were. But the cultural revolution faded, as the former Stokely Carmichael said, because we were “mobilized but not organized.” Let us learn the difference.
The following and a long list of other prominent black males processed their hair before “Black Was Beautiful.”
• James Brown
• Malcolm X
• Marvin Gaye
• Miles Davis
• Samuel Cooke
• The Isley Brothers
• The Miracles