The Art of Manliness - #260： Knights of the Razor

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast the barbershop

00:00:19.180 has been an important institution the african-american community for generations but

00:00:23.140 what many don't know is that up until about the reconstruction era pretty much all barbers the

00:00:28.220 united states whether they cut the hair of white men or black men they were african-american and

00:00:33.900 that barbering provided many black men a good enough living to enter the upper middle class

00:00:38.240 even back in the 19th century well today on the show i talked to historian douglas bristol about

00:00:44.140 his book recounting this lost part of american male history it's called knights of the razor black

00:00:48.900 barbers and slavery and freedom and today on the show doug and i discussed the rise of the black

00:00:53.660 barber in slaveholding states in the south the influence black barbers had in the white community

00:00:58.100 and how black barbers paved the way for the modern barbershop we also discussed the factors that

00:01:03.200 led to the segregation of the barbershop and why the barbershop maintained a stronger allegiance

00:01:07.340 among black men compared to their white counterparts really fascinating show after the show's over 1.00

00:01:11.960 check out the show notes at aom.is black barber douglas bristol welcome to the show well hi brett i'm glad

00:01:24.040 to be here uh so you're a professor of history you got a great book out that i read because barbershops

00:01:30.100 are something we're interested here at the art of manliness um but you explore the history of

00:01:34.620 barbershops particularly black barbers in american history books called book is called knights of the

00:01:40.060 razor um now barbershops have sort of become this idealized american institution um and for the

00:01:49.280 african-american community the black barbershop is an important has been like a foundational uh

00:01:54.040 community touchstone for men but i thought it was interesting your book you talk about in your book

00:01:59.820 is that before the 20th century um black barbers primarily serviced a white clientele and in fact as

00:02:08.440 you highlight in your book most barbers in america before the civil war were black so what was the status

00:02:15.920 of the barber profession in the late 18th and early 19th century in america that

00:02:21.620 caused more black men to go into the profession as opposed to white men wow we've touched on a lot

00:02:27.700 of issues that are involved in this book um as you said i want to follow up and just talk about how

00:02:32.320 central a place black barbershops are to today's african-american community um you know i'm thinking

00:02:39.200 about the movie barbershop and the character everybody loves eddie you know talks about it's the black man's

00:02:44.360 country club i mean it's the one place where black men can speak uh freely without being under

00:02:50.740 surveillance from whites and think about what they want that's why civil rights protests were planned 0.87

00:02:56.160 there uh in fact you know i'm in mississippi and there's a there was a barber shop in hattiesburg

00:03:01.900 mississippi so many of the men migrated to chicago that the barber moved to chicago and called it the

00:03:07.940 hattiesburg barber shop but you know as you pointed out my book is about this forgotten chapter

00:03:12.320 in the history of black barbers in the 18th and 19th century uh when they served white men

00:03:18.460 rather than black men and what makes it even more curious when you think about it is if you look at

00:03:24.240 19th century portraits or whatnot the guys were pretty shaggy they weren't that worried about their

00:03:29.440 haircut you went to a barber shop because you wanted to shave and the only way to get that with was with

00:03:34.340 a straight edge razor so this is a story of the black man's razor at the white man's throat and of

00:03:40.280 course you're asking a great question why why did that become the common thing in the country and

00:03:45.300 the answer has a lot to do with understanding uh race relations if you think about it this is still

00:03:51.160 true in many ways uh most white men don't really go to barber shops anymore and when we go to a shop

00:03:56.900 we tend to have someone with a different status than us cut our hair it's a woman it's an immigrant 0.92

00:04:03.160 uh and there's a phenomenon that goes on in barbering that traces its roots back to you know 16th century

00:04:10.880 europe when one of the ways that people asserted that they were gentlemen is that they had they took

00:04:17.240 care of their hair and shaved the whiskers from their face and so uh to groom yourself was originally

00:04:24.680 thought of as a way of distinguishing distinguishing yourself in society and you relied on servants to do

00:04:31.540 that and it's the association of personal service you know tending to your body by cutting your hair

00:04:37.480 and shaving your whiskers uh that makes barbering associated outside the black community uh with low

00:04:45.380 status and so in the 18th and 19th century we saw uh the first slave barbers are actually owned by

00:04:53.760 planters of large plantations this is a handful maybe 50 planters had enough slaves 100 or more

00:05:00.580 where they could actually have house servants who would include what they called a slave waiting 0.99

00:05:04.960 man who would often not only um cut his master's hair and take care of his clothes and shave him but

00:05:12.180 also would serve as kind of his major domo helping keep books supervising other slaves on the plantation

00:05:18.120 um what really is key is is and this gets to uh the strange duality of barbers that you really see

00:05:26.100 in 19th century black barbers on the one hand because of the racial difference and early on because the 0.68

00:05:31.780 black men were the property of the people they serve the status is very unequal however uh going back to 0.97

00:05:38.980 eddie from barbershop you know he points out one of the functions of a barber is to be someone's fashion

00:05:42.860 coach and so that really gives that person authority because you go to a barber hoping they're going to make

00:05:49.360 you look good look hip and so that gives them power so there's always a tension in relationship

00:05:55.380 between uh the white customer and the black barber i thought it was interesting too it's going back to

00:06:01.700 this idea of the the slave barbers for these um southern planters um you know they they would often

00:06:08.100 pick um one of their slaves to be what you call a waiting what they called a waiting man and they would 0.56

00:06:12.900 the waiting men would actually become very genteel like they would wear powdered wigs and like have

00:06:18.120 like the nice clothes and they would they got to listen in on conversations um with of their masters

00:06:23.740 with other white men in the elite circles and so they they did sort of become elite themselves in a way

00:06:30.220 um and as you said that their masters relied on their their waiting man to make them look awesome

00:06:36.840 so i mean how did that dynamic there play out between master and slave that where you had a slave who was

00:06:45.180 in some cases just as genteel as you were um cutting your hair and actually giving you

00:06:51.220 information on how to present yourself better well maybe the best way to answer that question is to

00:06:55.620 give an example of a very wealthy planner named landon carter who is a third generation planner who

00:07:01.660 owned several thousand acres over 100 slaves and his really um up and down relationship with his

00:07:11.220 waiting man who was a named nassau uh there's a couple things in this story that really get at

00:07:15.720 important issues the key thing with talking about the slave barber has power because he understands how

00:07:21.900 to make his master look the right way to acquire status is acculturation one of the main findings in

00:07:28.900 the last 20 years in the history of slavery especially in the period before the american revolution

00:07:33.120 slaves who had learned uh anglo-american culture were more useful to their masters but at the same 0.97

00:07:41.640 time they were more troublesome because they understood the master's world and to go back to that

00:07:47.200 example of landing carter at nassau uh carter actually allowed nassau to treat he was a basically a folk

00:07:54.860 doctor so he treated uh even members of carter's own family uh he collected debts uh he took care of his

00:08:02.760 horses but he also had a really bad drinking habit uh that would often let him nassau it seemed to be just

00:08:10.620 delighted in thumbing his nose as master's uh face and one of the uh this is all from landing carter's

00:08:17.400 diary and one of the stories that i put in the book uh talks about how landon carter goes to a party

00:08:23.660 at another plantation house and when he leaves he can't find nassau to drive him home because nassau's

00:08:29.700 off drinking somewhere and landon carter ends up getting his carriage stuck in the mud and there

00:08:35.600 he's pulling this thing out and then along comes riding by comes nassau and his son you know drunk

00:08:42.140 as skunks riding laughing and just leaving him in the mud so there's this sense of the tension

00:08:47.220 because of that uh power on both sides of the relationship that had to do with the familiarity

00:08:53.080 of culture what did the the slave barbers were they able to gain some respect within elite white

00:08:59.120 circles because of their gentility like i think you gave an example of one guy who uh did the hair

00:09:04.760 for a lady which i thought i didn't know this like back in the 18th century when everyone wore 0.94

00:09:09.340 powdered wigs the ladies had to shave their heads i didn't know that right that's how the wigs were 1.00

00:09:13.880 possible and this of course is really surprising because later in the 19th century uh racial stereotypes 0.98

00:09:20.780 change and we get the notion that all black men secretly wish to rape white women so you 0.97

00:09:26.660 do everything possible it's the whole foundation for segregation to keep them separate and yet 0.98

00:09:31.220 in the years just after uh the haitian slave revolt uh pierre truissant who was a slave who left with

00:09:41.440 his master's family after the haitian slave revolt he was part of this middling class of people of 0.90

00:09:47.460 color who were mixed race who were essentially the the middlemen the supervisors the managers on

00:09:53.980 plantations in haiti so they had to flee uh the island when they're when they have this successful

00:09:59.440 slave revolt and he ends up supporting his master's family living in new york city and his real appeal

00:10:06.580 is that people thought he was the perfect gentleman so much so that one of his customers actually wrote

00:10:12.300 an admiring biography of tucson yeah it's nuts and i thought it was crazy too where the the slave

00:10:18.260 or the former slave or the slave was supporting the the master's family from his own pocket well and as i

00:10:23.780 discuss in the book it really makes sense for him because um great black skin was associated with

00:10:31.780 being degraded and he actually there are some letters uh that he corresponds with friends where he talks

00:10:37.760 about his frustration that whites just are incapable of really understanding that he's a thinking person

00:10:45.140 just like themselves um so with tucson he needed to support his um master because he needs to have

00:10:53.180 some claim to polite society and so uh by living with his master he was respectable which made it

00:11:00.840 acceptable for him to take care of these first class women uh who he was serving later on uh when he

00:11:07.680 his masters passed away he actually continues to hold dinner parties for his customers but he will not

00:11:15.500 sit and eat with the white people so he's maintaining that distance but by have by entertaining 0.89

00:11:21.320 he keeps that connection to elite uh gentile society right and i think you you talk about this too it's

00:11:29.340 sort of related that after the revolution there began to be this emancipation of slaves in the north

00:11:34.120 and in the upper south um you talk about how the former barber slaves would maintain connections with

00:11:41.680 their former masters even if they were freed in order to i don't know transition more smoothly to being a

00:11:48.220 freedman right and that that relationship is important to think if we think of emancipation

00:11:53.040 means freedom the uh slaves you can free and go off and have a completely independent life

00:11:57.900 that was not possible because free blacks in the south had very limited legal rights for example if

00:12:05.320 you own a business you need to be able to collect debts but since black people couldn't testify against 1.00

00:12:10.500 whites in courts it was a very practical matter that you had to have some kind of a white patron

00:12:15.460 who would act on your behalf and circumstances such as that and so yeah so many of them maintained uh

00:12:21.400 connections with them um now before the civil war we mentioned this earlier most barbers were black and

00:12:28.520 served primarily a white clientele and because barber was considered a low status position white people

00:12:33.800 thought it was beneath them to do that so black people stepped in to fill that position but as you said

00:12:39.360 earlier at the very beginning there's this weird uh power social dynamic going on you had a black man 0.98

00:12:46.620 who was seen as subservient degraded um with a razor blade to the throat of a white man who thought who

00:12:54.660 was in power i mean so what what was the social dynamic like in the barber shops between a black business

00:13:01.440 owner and a white patron during the you know before the civil war uh i mean that's a an excellent

00:13:07.300 question because it's a real ritual power uh when the white customer would come in no matter if he

00:13:14.460 was speaking to the shop's owner no matter if he had known the the barber for years he would feel free

00:13:20.980 to command to know whether he had washed his hands recently or if the towel was clean and so clearly

00:13:27.680 asserting his authority over a black man but then he gets in the chair and of course leans back and 0.91

00:13:32.760 exposes his throat um once he's lathered up he can't even speak because he opens his mouth would

00:13:38.020 be full of shaving cream and my understanding of that is that it reaffirmed their greater power by being 0.97

00:13:49.500 white because they had no question that black men were inferior to them so that demonstrates their 1.00

00:13:58.220 mastery to put the their lives at risk by exposing the throat to a black man and knowing nothing 0.98

00:14:03.580 would ever happen and did the social dynamics differ depending on what part of the country

00:14:08.400 where you were in if you were in say the northern states or the mid-atlantic states or the deep south

00:14:13.260 uh well there's two things to talk about that first is people often assume this is a southern story

00:14:17.780 uh because most african americans live in the south and it's not black barbers were the most

00:14:22.140 consistently successful black businessmen throughout the entire country and in fact uh there's good 0.99

00:14:28.460 evidence that suggests the first black men to live in chicago los angeles and seattle were black barbers

00:14:34.760 because this niche was so well established that they could go anywhere and open up a shop but did that

00:14:40.560 uh did the dynamic change between black uh business owners and their white clients depending on what if

00:14:45.980 they were in chicago or new york or uh charleston um before the civil war you really don't see any

00:14:53.000 difference and in fact some british visitors who are really they're very curious about this phenomenon

00:14:58.500 because you know as one uh english traveler wrote um you know under most circumstances you know white

00:15:05.420 men avoid being around black men and then in this circumstance they seem to love going to the 1.00

00:15:11.120 barbershop and they've noticed that was even true in new york city and one traveler gave the

00:15:18.280 explanation that it allows them to be you know play the master in a society where there really aren't

00:15:23.740 slaves anymore because you white simply could get away with a certain demeanor with with black servants 1.00

00:15:29.680 that white servants would not tolerate now after the war civil war everything changes because of course 0.93

00:15:37.420 the republican party is dominant in the north and it was the party of emancipation and uh especially

00:15:44.480 the best example is uh george myers uh the famous barber of cleveland ohio who was uh a close friend of

00:15:53.260 mark hannah he got enough black votes at the convention to get william mckinley nominated uh for the

00:16:00.380 republican party's uh nomination for president and so he there were barbers like myers

00:16:07.000 that played an active role in patronage politics because of course what would be the main thing the

00:16:12.620 white men would talk about in the shop was politics politics and business and so they were in in a

00:16:18.360 context where republican party politics in the north made it acceptable for black men to participate

00:16:22.800 um the relationship was completely different because they were partners unequal partners um in making

00:16:31.480 sure that the republican party rode to victory at every election and in the south it was probably

00:16:36.420 not like that no not at all although interestingly enough um john rapier senior who lived in

00:16:44.820 florence alabama had several of his sons became barbers uh and one of his sons actually became a

00:16:50.600 reconstruction congressman but john senior was the first african-american official in the state of

00:16:59.120 alabama and there's a petition so we know why they decided to pick him he was a voting registrar of

00:17:05.880 all things in alabama and people in the whites supporting this appointment wrote that you know

00:17:12.500 we can trust our barber john to be conservative so a southern barber could be trusted to be discreet

00:17:20.320 and to never challenge the social order in front of whites i thought was interesting too i had no idea

00:17:25.980 about this but you know before the civil war um despite being seen as a subservient occupation black

00:17:31.840 barbers became some of the wealthiest men uh in antebellum america i mean some of them were leaving

00:17:38.080 estates of a hundred thousand dollars behind i mean any notable examples of financially successful

00:17:43.480 black barbers that you came across um well you know the interesting thing i can tell you the names

00:17:48.680 of people who had a lot of money but they tended not to be people who were famous in other regards

00:17:53.640 um so i didn't focus on them as much i think the the larger issue is that um collectively what the

00:18:03.800 knights of the razor as i like to call themselves did is they were able to invent something new they

00:18:09.300 were you know a real entrepreneur where they're uh not only risking their money but they're coming

00:18:14.120 up with a new innovative idea and that idea was the first class barbershop and what they were doing

00:18:18.960 with this uh in the 1820s this fad hit american cities of having hotels that had what were referred

00:18:26.500 to as saloons which was a corruption of of salon which is a public room that you would find in an

00:18:32.700 aristocratic house and these were going to be palaces of the people and the idea was that americans

00:18:39.040 can celebrate their equality and their prosperity by mingling together in these public settings where they

00:18:44.700 were clearly very genteel um so barbers by adopting some of the trappings of a victorian parlor the

00:18:54.020 drapes the so the the very first barber's chairs that we would recognize were adopted by black men

00:19:00.740 they'd have upholstered chairs that would recline which was a considerable advance over what came before

00:19:07.400 it and of course these are large establishments centrally located often in the town's leading hotel

00:19:13.800 and it's their development of of service and that included the experience of luxury

00:19:22.300 that made them able to fend off white competitors for the rest of the 19th century and of course that's 0.95

00:19:29.240 what led to the profit but i thought was interesting too so you know they were able to fend off white 0.99

00:19:33.300 competitors we'll get into more about how um white barbers kind of broke monopoly on the barber trade

00:19:39.140 later on but you talk about some of these individuals who made lots of money um but they

00:19:45.180 seem sort of ambivalent about their occupation they're like yeah i made a lot of money

00:19:49.080 but they still felt the sting of you know low status because they were a barber i think uh you might be

00:19:56.480 uh referring to some of the comments made by black leaders such as frederick douglas or martin

00:20:03.200 delaney or or david walker who all at different points criticized barbers for pulling down the race

00:20:10.660 uh by reinforcing the stereotypes that black people are are servile uh this is something i'm actually

00:20:18.140 having students write a paper about this where they're looking at these editorials and debating

00:20:21.520 you know writing a paper talking about you know was that a fair criticism or not and you know one of the

00:20:27.380 things that came up in discussion with the students is there are some similar comments about rap stars 0.95

00:20:32.900 today like flavor flame many black people thinks make blacks look ridiculous he's mainly selling 0.99

00:20:40.100 albums to teenage white men um so it's a similar phenomenon we can we can understand it by comparison 0.98

00:20:46.620 right that is an interesting uh comparison yeah i thought that was interesting that black barbers had

00:20:52.620 um this very i mean sort of in the african-american community they had they were sort of ambivalent

00:20:58.460 about barbers on the one hand they were proud of the the knights of the razor because they were

00:21:02.460 entrepreneurial they were business owners they were it was a path to middle class living but yeah at the

00:21:07.000 same time as you said frederick douglas criticized them because they were doing this um through the

00:21:12.020 the role of a barber which was a subservient position well and you have to well like i do in the book you

00:21:16.700 have to look at what douglas was asking to see if it's reasonable because you can get the idea that 0.96

00:21:20.700 um you're not as people would say representing well to to play the fool and um shuck and grin for white 0.96

00:21:28.200 customers but what douglas in a series of editorials that he published in his newspaper 0.98

00:21:34.620 called for parents to make their children mechanics and not waiters and barbers and other forms of

00:21:43.400 servants the problem with that is that you know it was not possible for the overwhelming majority

00:21:52.160 of free black people to learn a trade because they the white skilled craftsmen refused to train them 0.98

00:21:59.380 as apprentices um frederick douglas himself was a skilled ship's caulker uh when he ran away from

00:22:05.720 maryland and gained his freedom and he was unable to gain employment in that trade in the north i mean

00:22:10.680 part of what's going on is just it's an aspiration for the african-american community again to kind of

00:22:15.940 draw a parallel to the present uh that would be like a black leader today saying people in south

00:22:21.720 central la need to become computer programmers because that's you know the cutting edge technology 0.96

00:22:27.580 it's the kind of expertise that's going to gain lots of money that that makes sense on the face of

00:22:33.400 it but it's unlikely that people have the skills or the access that they could actually do that so that's

00:22:38.560 why in the book i agree with barbers who defended themselves and said that look you have to realize

00:22:44.480 we are the majority of business owners and business ownership allows us to build churches and keep our

00:22:51.580 wives at home and send our kids to school and promote a more respectable black elite and you know going 1.00

00:22:57.820 back to this idea of uh job training right i mean to telling uh to become a mechanic that was probably

00:23:04.800 impossible because white people wouldn't train them but within the knights of the razor as they 1.00

00:23:09.260 called themselves they had they created a a journeyman's process right an apprenticeship process

00:23:15.160 to train other black men on how to become a barber yeah and that's uh really something i think is really

00:23:22.600 key to understanding not only why they were successful because this is a book about business success by small

00:23:28.300 entrepreneurs but it's also about uh why they've established a a tradition of men supporting other

00:23:35.040 men of mutual aid that continues to exist in today's barbershop um one of the best sources for

00:23:41.180 understanding antebellum traditions of working with apprentices and supporting them comes from an

00:23:47.240 extraordinary document which is the diary of william johnson william johnson was a free black man he was

00:23:53.820 a leading black barber in natchez mississippi when it was the heart of the cotton kingdom in the 1830s and

00:24:00.240 1840s he left behind a 2000 page diary which is the longest single narrative written by any african-american

00:24:08.600 before the civil war um because he knew everyone it's the best single source on the history of natchez at

00:24:15.400 that time but for our purposes it's really interesting to see what he wrote about he he had over 20 young

00:24:22.540 men live in his house as apprentices so this is uh not the community college experience that we might

00:24:29.060 picture with an apprentice now um families often single mothers uh would drop their kid off with

00:24:37.180 william johnson when they were 10 11 12 years old and the understanding was johnson would not only

00:24:43.480 teach them the barber trade or the tonsorial arts as they were called but uh make sure they grew up to

00:24:50.780 be respectable men who could read and write who went to church um and and it it's very interesting

00:24:57.240 to see johnson is a figure he's he had a white father and a black mother so he's a man who's kind

00:25:03.700 of in between he doesn't fit in with the the slave community but the whites won't accept them some of

00:25:10.060 these apprentices represent the only people that he could identify because they would come often white

00:25:14.940 fathers would place their illegitimate uh mixed-race son with him and so uh he has for example one of

00:25:22.780 those apprentices was william winston uh who was named after lieutenant governor winston of mississippi

00:25:29.260 who was his father and johnson really takes a shine to winston and and being amused at him fighting back

00:25:37.140 against the older boys or that he would not attend darky parties that he he was a more reserved dignified

00:25:45.100 person and ultimately ends up uh helping winston uh gain his own shop as so he can be an independent

00:25:52.900 black barber and this is of course the real tradition of mutual aid teach people to trade but teach them how 0.95

00:25:58.780 to be strong black men help them become their own businessmen and then when you know when other barbers

00:26:04.500 would grow older provide them with employment now at the end of the 19th century this undergoes a

00:26:11.120 dramatic transformation and it has to do with the rise of black owned business for black customers with

00:26:19.540 urban migration african americans finally have enough disposable income they can support first off their

00:26:25.880 own black barbershops most african americans before then had simply cut each other's hair at home 0.97

00:26:31.780 but more importantly they can support um insurance companies and i think maybe before you were want me

00:26:38.400 to talk about alonzo herndon and john merrick who were two very wealthy barbers herndon in atlanta

00:26:46.040 merrick and durham north carolina each man established uh insurance companies to sell insurance to blacks at a

00:26:53.800 time when prudential insurance for example simply refused to write policies to black customers they said

00:27:00.280 they died their have mortality rate was too high the reason i'm i'm talking about these companies

00:27:05.240 though is i've argued that herndon and merrick um made their businesses so successful and by the way

00:27:12.520 merrick's north carolina mutual life insurance company became the largest black owned business in the world

00:27:18.500 uh up through the 1960s and it was successful though because they were able to translate that tradition of

00:27:24.320 mutual aid to selling insurance to how they recruited and groomed and mentored young salesmen

00:27:32.100 made them district managers have gathered social gatherings that reflect what we saw barbers doing

00:27:38.800 50 years earlier and so you know there is a direct connection between black business in the present

00:27:45.800 especially black barbershops where it's about um making sure that members of the community help each

00:27:51.680 other and economic self-help and the traditions of these barbers in the 19th century who had very

00:27:57.640 different lives because they served white customers what i thought it was interesting too so in the

00:28:02.320 sort of the in tail end of the 19th century you started seeing a large increase of immigration from

00:28:08.380 europe from germany from italy and these people a lot of the men they were barbers they came to be

00:28:14.920 barbers and they started competing with black barbers in america but you talk about in the book that

00:28:20.300 even though there are these white men who are barbers offering the services a lot of white men still

00:28:25.700 prefer to be barbered by black barbers um why was that an immigrant was a white man and that was not a

00:28:34.440 clear marker of difference in status white men preferred to be weighted by on by someone who is 0.96

00:28:40.720 clearly their inferior um also especially in the north with this competition the farther south he went

00:28:48.900 the stronger was the hold of black barbers over white customers uh but in the north um the other

00:28:55.740 facet is the in first class shops the barbers had much more in common with their customers than

00:29:03.520 an italian immigrant the turns out the skill that italian immigrants in the late 19th century were 0.98

00:29:09.320 most likely to bring from italy was barbering uh but so a black barber who's involved in republican

00:29:16.720 party politics uh who has extensive business interest of his own it's going to have more in

00:29:22.220 common with well-to-do white customers than a recent immigrant off the boat um of course this is all 0.78

00:29:28.220 going to change one thing i was hoping we'd have a chance to talk about is the impact of licensing

00:29:32.040 and how that was used by uh unions to exclude african americans ultimately from the trade yeah let's

00:29:39.900 talk about that because yeah in every state you have to be licensed to be a barber right and the origins of

00:29:44.980 that um two things really contributed to that and this both happens in the 1880s the first is we

00:29:51.700 start to get a more widespread understanding that germs cause disease and a french scientist publishes

00:29:58.940 an article that scandalizes people because he looks at a stipic pencil which is what you use after you cut

00:30:05.200 your face shaving and found 60 000 different kinds of germs living on on this and there's this sense that

00:30:11.960 barber shops are cesspools of of uh contagious disease um at the same time there's concerns about

00:30:21.160 the sanitation of barber shops we also see the first of the barber schools so for-profit commercial

00:30:29.280 barber schools it was manned by a man named ab moeller set these up all over the country wrote

00:30:35.160 textbooks so he wrote the first text for barber colleges and this created a flood of what were called

00:30:40.460 cheap barbers because they were not very well trained and consequently couldn't charge much and so they

00:30:46.280 ruined the trade in a sense that they drove down prices for shaves and haircuts and so

00:30:52.500 there was a union the journeyman barbers international union of america that was associated

00:30:59.560 with the american federation of labor the leaders mostly second third generation german americans saw their

00:31:08.700 opportunity to seize on the issue of sanitation to limit competition and while they're at it finally

00:31:16.640 exclude the blacks in the first class barber shops and the the pretext for licensing laws 0.90

00:31:24.400 was to ensure the sanitation of barber shops and protect public health and the idea was and they

00:31:32.580 really traded on gross stereotypes about italian immigrants or african americans being disease

00:31:39.240 carriers because they were unclean sexually promiscuous and um so starting in the 1880s we see the first 0.66

00:31:48.460 laws being passed and for a while i had mentioned george myers the barber the kingmaker uh that helps

00:31:57.160 william mckinley become president who's barber in cleveland men like him are able to fight back by

00:32:03.280 buying you know retrofitting reinventing the barber shop one more time so it's something really closer

00:32:09.320 to today where there's lots of sinks and uh you sterilize combs and barbicide and uh they had

00:32:17.900 elaborate steamers to uh sterilize the razors and whatnot so for a time being black the black barbers that 0.97

00:32:26.660 owned the best shops were able to update to this new regime but all in the long run licensing driven by

00:32:34.920 concerns about sanitation will exclude them and then of course one thing i didn't get a chance to talk

00:32:40.620 about in my book is when william gillette invents his razor he claims that this is the most sanitary

00:32:49.360 option is to not have to go to the barber shop at all and there are early ads that say isn't it annoying

00:32:55.300 when you go to the barber shop and your barber's hand smell like garlic and cheap cigars and wouldn't

00:33:01.340 you rather just shave yourself at home so again an appeal greater sanitation and a chance to not

00:33:08.060 associate with people who you consider your social inferiors so besides licensing what other factors

00:33:14.300 eventually led to the segregation of the barber shop in america where you have black barbers servicing 0.59

00:33:19.740 primary african-american men and white barbers servicing primarily white men and even now i mean

00:33:25.540 the white barber shops kind of it's kind of making a resurgent but it's kind of defunct yeah it's really

00:33:30.460 the the african-american community that's been loyal to its barber shops uh it really has to do with the

00:33:36.440 rise of segregation at the end of the 19th century um it's ironic you know the barbers were criticized by

00:33:43.860 black leaders because they wouldn't serve other black men they had they ran and affect segregated 0.59

00:33:47.880 institutions um but uh as historians have shown you know the real fundamental change in race relations 0.78

00:33:55.660 in the 1890s that's when we see the height of lynching for example and increasingly younger

00:34:01.780 generations of white men do not want a black barber um i actually found a gentleman named george hall in

00:34:08.620 mobile back in the 1990s and in the 20s he had served in his uncle's barbershop in mobile where they

00:34:15.200 still served white men but he said at that point it was all very old men and the younger men didn't

00:34:20.300 come in the shop so as race relations grew worse whites became more reluctant younger whites became

00:34:27.440 reluctant to go to black barbershops but at the same time um the opportunity i discussed before the

00:34:32.880 greater earning power of wage earning urban black people meant that many of the barbers i studied

00:34:39.100 simply just switched to serving black men which you know in the long run was a more satisfying 0.82

00:34:45.400 situation for them anyways and why do you think that the black barbershop has endured while

00:34:50.620 the barbershop for you know in the white community hasn't fared so well well it's that tradition of 1.00

00:34:56.920 mutual aid and i think it's reinforced so there's this sense that a barber is something more than someone

00:35:03.000 who's going to give you a haircut this is a a coach a counselor and financial advisor uh so their idea

00:35:12.680 of taking care of barbers taking care of each other it extends to their customers especially now that

00:35:17.400 they have so much in common they're the same race they live in the same community i think too though

00:35:22.940 another reason why this is so particular to the african-american community is black barbershops

00:35:29.280 reaffirm the masculinity of black men which is questioned in many places that there are real men

00:35:35.920 a lot of stereotypes for example critical of people on public assistance that men don't black men don't

00:35:43.280 make good uh providers and whatnot so in mainstream life where they're worried about police profiling

00:35:49.840 them in a black barbershop they get respected as a man and taken seriously as a man which is you know

00:35:57.580 there are a few other places where they're going to find that well douglas this has been a great

00:36:01.780 conversation is anywhere where people can go to learn more about the book yeah they sure can uh if

00:36:06.340 they look at the johns hopkins university website uh there's a couple links for videos i've made about

00:36:13.300 the book and of course you can get it on amazon.com it came out last year in paperback so i hope people

00:36:18.340 will take the opportunity to look at the book themselves i hope they do it's really it's a really

00:36:22.660 fascinating part of history that gets overlooked well douglas bristol thank you so much for your time it's been

00:36:27.440 a pleasure hey brett it was really nice talking to you thanks for your time my guest today was

00:36:31.260 douglas bristol he's the author of the book knights of the razor black barbers and slavery and freedom

00:36:35.920 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere check it out also check out our show

00:36:40.100 notes at aom.is slash black barber where you can find the links to resources where you can delve deeper

00:36:44.480 into this topic

00:36:45.140 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:37:01.340 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com if you enjoy the show i'd

00:37:06.000 appreciate you to give this review on itunes or stitcher our show is edited by creative audio lab

00:37:09.820 here in tulsa oklahoma if you have any audio editing needs check them out at creative audio lab.com

00:37:14.440 and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:37:18.520 you

00:37:23.140 you

00:37:23.520 you

00:37:25.740 you

00:37:26.920 you

00:37:32.780 you

00:37:32.880 you

00:37:34.960 you

The Art of Manliness - December 13, 2016

#260： Knights of the Razor

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript