Black Barbers and the Civil Rights Movement

Cutting Along the Color Line provides an insightful history of black barbering and its effect on American labor, civil rights, and black enterprise during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With the exception of published memoirs, such as Craig Marbertty’s Cuttin’ Up: Wit and Wisdom from Black Barber Shops (2005), literature on black barbering has been sparse; historical scholarship has recently attempted to redress this void. Victoria Harris-Lacewell’s Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (2006) revealed the complex role that black barber shops played and continue to play in shaping ideology and grassroots political debate. In turn, Douglas W. Bristol Jr.’s Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom (2009) explored black barbering from the American Revolution to the First World War, charting the course of race relations and the significance of black entrepreneurs. Cutting Along the Color Line builds on this scholarship by devoting additional attention to the tumultuous era between the First World War and the 1970s, while also providing a nuanced analysis of black barbers, the nature of their power, and the significance of their workplace.

Cutting Along the Color Line is organized chronologically and each chapter is divided into thematic sections. Mills draws on an interdisciplinary approach informed by a range of academic interests, including social movements, financial security, and political activism. Through interviews, archival collections, and historic newspapers, Mills argues that black barbers enjoyed remarkable agency in a nation divided by race. They became savvy entrepreneurs and influential political actors who negotiated race relations to create a niche in a competitive marketplace. Even though the primary focus of this book concerns the development and transformation of black barbershops through the lens of barbers and their patrons, the book does much more. By exploring black entrepreneurship and its patronage network, Mills also shows the importance of black barbershops in shaping meanings of race, class, and identity. By operating businesses, hiring employees, and providing spaces for discussion, black barbers not only advanced their own economic interests, but also the civil rights movement.

Mills allocates the first chapter to barbering during the antebellum era from 1830 to 1861. He shows that black barbering in the South was practiced on the plantation as slaves groomed each other and their masters. White slave-owners considered black barbers an investment and would often rent them out to neighboring plantations or to city establishments. Southern black barbers experienced a rare form of personal and economic freedom not enjoyed by most field hands or domestic servants. White patrons did not consider black barbers a threat to the social order, since they believed barbering was a servile role; most black barbers did not challenge this view, but played the role as “captive capitalists” (p. 17). In the North, black barbers faced different challenges, including competition from native-born white barbers and criticism from middle-class black reformers. Reformers questioned black barbers’ masculinity as servile service workers and their commitment to civil rights, while demanding adherence to strict standards of behavior. Despite competition and criticism, some Northern black barbers formed relationships with prominent white patrons and used their profits to invest in their communities and to purchase the freedom of enslaved family members. The economic mobility offered by barbering became, for some, the first step on the road to independence and freedom.

In the second chapter, Mills explores the experiences of black barbers after the Civil War, from 1865 to 1918. He shows that barbering was a unique vocation, offering freedmen a portable means of making an income without a substantial economic investment; tonsorial tools and shop rents were relatively affordable and mobility was crucial in a culture where meanings of freedom remained contested. Black barbers continued to dominate the marketplace by catering to the needs of white patrons. However, it was a tenuous relationship; when black barbers expanded their businesses, invested their profits, and diversified into insurance and banking enterprises...