It’s been around 25 years since I first saw someone with dreadlocks. It was in the mid 1980s during the hey day of the Jheri Curl (yes I had one) and MOVE Members were in the news every day because of a trial that resulted when the police dropped a bomb on Osage Avenue in Philadelphia where a group of MOVE Members lived. 

The MOVE Members were a back to nature group with dreadlocks. Not the cultivated kind of locks that are separated, oiled and twisted after every wash, but rather the kind that looked to my eyes back then like a frightening unkempt nest of nappy snakes. And the news machines were doing a number on the American public at the time. In an effort to justify the bombing, there was a spin on the coverage making it look as if the group deserved it. Today they would be called “green” but in the ‘80s they seemed strange and dangerous because their lifestyle veered very far from the mainstream.

Even though I was as an aspiring writer during the 1986 trial, I didn’t read the news reports, but I do remember seeing Ramona Africa on the nightly news. As the only adult who survived the fire she defended herself in a highly publicized trial that my mother followed religiously. I remember at 16 thinking that if the MOVE Members looked that bad, they must be bad. And I’m sure my conclusion was based partially on the way they wore their hair. But I didn’t give it much thought. I was too focused on clothes and keeping my own “curl” activated.

One day years later as I sat in the audience of a natural hair conference at Pratt University in Brooklyn with my own crop of dreadlocks, I pictured myself back in 1986 at the kitchen table with my family and a plastic bag on my head to keep my “curl” moisturized. And I wondered about all of the steps it had taken for me to get to this point. From a “curl” in Thorndale, Pennsylvania to a natural hair conference in Brooklyn, New York 15 years later.

 

 

I believe my motivations for committing to natural hair are two fold. First perms burned the mess out of my scalp. I’m not sure what the rules are now, but back in the day, you were supposed to get your hair relaxed every six weeks. I dreaded the experience so much I’d put it off for six months!

But it wasn’t just the physical discomfort of relaxers that drove me to natural hair, more importantly, I’m the product of Pennsylvania State University’s Black Studies program. In fact my husband, Yaw Asare, is the second person to graduate from the program with a bachelors degree. I minored in Black Studies along with my Journalism major. Try reading Molefi Asante’s Afrocentricity and Ivan Van Sertima’s Black Women in Antiquity and then run and put a relaxer in your hair. Well some can, but after ingesting so much information I decided not to continue straightening my hair.

I think I’ve taken for granted the momentous decision I made to go natural back in 1992. I’d been getting braids for a few years and decided to take them out. While I wanted to be natural I had no role models. All of the women I knew save one either had a perm or braids. The one woman I knew with a natural had soft long hair. Unlike my coarse, nappy, thick stuff. So not knowing what else to do I ran to the hairdresser for one last straightening. Wish I could remember the day, but I don’t. Again, at the time I had no idea that I was making a life altering decision.

 

1992 Graduation with braids – 1993 an afro – started locs

I’m not sure about the exact chronology of all this but somewhere along the way when I was trying to go natural I started to date my husband, the Black Studies major. He graduated and went back home to New York City. Since I was still in Pennsylvania I’d visit him. After awhile we decided to try living in New York together. My husband’s family would send me the New York Times every week. I’d look through the help wanted section, send out resumes, arrange interviews and travel back and forth from Penn State where I was working to the city.

Sometimes I wonder how—aside from romantic love—I had the courage to come to New York. I was terrified of the idea at first. The whipping cabs, the complicated subway system, the culture shock was like nothing I’d ever experienced. After all I’m a Black girl who grew up in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. Not only that, New York City was where the crime drama, Kojak, took place in the 1970s. After ingesting episodes of this show weekly during my childhood, New York represented danger, madness and mayhem.

After a few visits I decided to come here anyway. Now thinking back I’m starting to remember the experience of being new to the city. For the first time in my life I saw dozens and dozens of Black women with their natural hair. I wouldn’t call myself an outgoing person, yet I would stop every woman with a natural I admired and ask her the who, what, when where and why of how she managed her hair. I first started visiting New York probably around January of 1993. By August of that year I had moved to the city and subsequently chopped off every last shred of that final perm. I never looked back not one time. Ever. That’s saying a lot since I am someone who can dither for years over major decisions. Making a commitment to natural hair was one decision I was able to make without any regrets.

So it wasn’t just the idea of being with my boyfriend that lured me to the city. It was self love as well. This was the first place—so far from home—where I felt the most at home. For the first time since I was child I didn’t have to have a perm my hair. I think by then I’d forgotten all about MOVE.

However, after arriving in New York I continued my Black Studies education with my husband and I happened across a book called Attention, MOVE! This is America!” by Margot Harry. After reading I was stunned. There was so much I didn’t know about the dreadlocked MOVE Members and the Osage Avenue bombing even though I lived in the vicinity of the tragedy. I just couldn’t get beyond their hair back then. Since I had a natural too by the time I read the book that particular barrier was no longer there.

A few years after reading Attention MOVE! I began to write a story about a girl who grew up during the 1980s. Like other fiction writers, I applied a bit of revisionist history. This time around the girl, who I called Bridget, decides to pay attention to the MOVE tragedy. And following this story is one of the contributing factors that help the girl grow up when she comes to realize there’s more to life than clothes. In the story Bridget draws strength from the example of Ramona Africa, a woman with dreadlocks, and learns from her. Six years after starting the story, and taking classes and vacillating back and forth, I published the book myself. It’s called Again and Again, my very first novel.

 

 

 

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