mysoulhasgrowndeep-liketherivers:
I had kind of a nerd-out this morning. But I felt like everyone needed to know about this.
I feel the need to drop some Black history on y’all since we on the subject of hair in the 1700s: in New Orleans/Louisiana slave women could hire themselves out (meaning they worked for someone other than their masters but the master kept a portion of the pay and the rest they kept to pay for their own upkeep) as hairdressers. Many of them made enough to buy their way out of freedom. And the fancy hair thing was huge in New Orleans among the Creole and free Black people. Their hairstyles were so elaborate and beautiful in the 1700s and 1800s that a law was passed requiring WoC to cover their hair in public. After this law WoC started rocking fancy and elegant fabric for hair wraps.
on the Northern side of things free Black women owned wig factories as early as 1700s in New England
That law was called the Tignon Laws.
It also had a lot to do with making them less desirable bc people were getting very salty about the appeal Mulatto women had to white men.