Everything about our natural kinky hair began in Africa.  The different hair textures of African people ranges from deep ebony, kinky curl of the Mandingos, to the loosely curled flowing locks of the Ashanti. (This is were the woman with Murder Inc. records got her name)

In the early fifteenth century, hair functioned as a carrier of messages in most West African societies.  The citizens of these societies - including the Wolof, Mende, Mandingo, and Yoroba were people who filled the slave ships that sailed to the New World.  Within these cultures, hair was an integral part of a complex language system.  Hairstyles were used to indicate a persons' marital status, age, religion, ethnic identity, geographic origins, wealth, and rank within the community.

               Composition of Hair

The composition of hair varies based on the hair type, one's age, sex, origin, and hair color.  Your hair grows from the scalp, it serves to protect the head from injury, and from the elements - the sun, cold weather, etc.  The foods and vitamins you in-take play a role on the growth and healthiness of your hair.  The DNA in the body predetermines the length to which the hair will grow.  The average head is about 120 square inches, and there are about 1,000 strands of hair per square inch, giving the average head about 120,000 strands of hair.  However, there are products that can aid the sheen strength, and overall well-being of you hair!

Dig it! I felt that it was time for another educational update. Can't always talk about pomades and wave brushes. I wanted to take a look at the past so I can understand the present and future.

"The African American family is in danger and so is our African culture. The Black male is under attack from all directions, with the media and all the negative images of us, the belief systems of our young sisters and our selves, our mothers unprepairedness for rearing boys to men, our fathers dieing or going to jail leaving us males to fend for our selves."

"Remember men, too much mothering is bad for you. There's a trend of emasculation (the destruction of manhood) in our community. We need to pump the brakes and check ourselves and our belief system. We have need to ask ourselves why are we being disrespected and why or we disrespecting each other. Be aware that what goes into our minds will come out in our actions toward our own seeds (children)."

This post is out of pure love for my people. I wanted to plant a seed in your mind and hope that it will blossum into a fruitful tree of a mighty orchard of strong black men.  

In the words of Mavin Gay, "What's going on?"

What's going on Brother, What's going on Sister?

War between us is not the answer!

Naw, I just read books without somebody making me do it. I choose to seek the "Truth" and not let it be told to me by somebody else.

The truth is not mentioned in public schools or at home anymore so we have to actively seek it on our own.

African American hair is very political. The way you choose to wear your hair speak volumes about you morals and values.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I know my African Culture?

2. Am I proud of my African Culture?

3. How do I express my African Culture?

4. Did my father teach me anything about being a MAN?

5. Can my mother teach me how to be a MAN?

6. What's the difference between my mother teaching me how to be a MAN and my father teaching me how to be a MAN?

7. Am I taking the place of my father as my mother's husband?

8. Am I moma's little man or am I my own MAN?

The answer to the last question is, I am my own man and my mother is a woman not a MAN. She has been socialized to think, act, and recieve help from society as a female. So no, I am not my mother's husband. I am my own MAN and when I become a MAN I can only use 50% of what my mother has taught me, the other 50% will have to come from a MAN who has lived as a MAN in this society.

Wake up MEN, Step up MEN, Speak up MEN, or be your mother's little man!

Thoughts = Seeds

Seeds grow into plants and plants grow into trees with deep roots.

You  will not learn anything unless you read and ask questions. I've studied African Anthropology and African American history. With these two fields of study, I am combining a BA in sociology. This is how I'm able to come at you guys like this everyday. Guys if I could write about African culture and how it has been lost in America, I wouldn't run out of words.

Seek the truth and compare it to the present day conditions of the African American culture. Our house has been divided against itself. The culture of hair today is a reflection of this destruction. I sale hair care products all day. Who do you think spends the most money on their hair? It has to do with an identity crisis. Who do you think is confused about how to wear their hair, confused about will it be accepted? Ask yourself, do they care what we think! Why not, is our opinion less valued than others opinion? Do we as men contribute to this destruction by ignoring our own African heritage and not expressing it in our actions and words?

What is coarse hair >>>>>>>> http://www.hairboutique.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=33422&PN=1 - http://www.hairboutique.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=33422& amp;PN=1

Good information for my Brothers to know.

One more time!

Thoughts = Seeds

Seeds grow into plants and plants grow into trees with deep roots.

"Young" World Wake Up!

You will not be young forever.

It's more to life than fads, cars, and women!

Your hair is your culture. What is your culture? Is it what you see on TV? Is it what other people tell you? Is your culture commercialization? Buy what you see? Do what is popular?

Or is it thinking and really using your brain?

Comments, Thoughts?

right knowledge! we need dat man 4 real,knowledge of self

Already!

I want my young brother to think. Look at what's going on around you. This can't be Dr. King's dream. We have to step UP or step out of the way and let the strong women do it for us. They read books and seek information. All our women need are strong MEN that think, not react.

Yall have to read this information. It is right on time. I would have copied and pasted it here but it's copy righted. I give all credit to Lisa Clayton Robison. She know her history. This tells of the struggle on dark skin, light skin, straight hair, curly hair, and how the willie lynch mind set is still alive and well.

Please read this, it will wake you up to the games we play on each other and how society manipulates what it considered beautiful in the African American Culture.>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> http://phenomenalsalons.com/articles/article3.html - http://phenomenalsalons.com/articles/article3.html #

http://phenomenalsalons.com/articles/article3.html -  

Madame C.J. Walker's created hair straightener for African Americans

"Walker System" = KITS and PERMS

BiggMike you are a deep cat. for real. I double major         & nbsp;    Africana Studies/English. i know where you are coming from. that's why i had to help you lace all these cats with book titles. i have all of them. since you are an anthropolgy major, check the books by ivan van sertima. he shows evidence about africans reaching the americas before europeans. christoher columbus also mentions seeing red and black people here when he arrived in his diary. think about it, egypt had pyramids way before south america. ask yourself, who taught them how to build?

don't be fooled in thinking original egyptians were caucasion either.

Peace to all the people on this site. some may think BiggMike is preaching, but he is speakin The Realness. 

The Origins of the Black Panther Party and One of the Origins of the "Nappy Hair Movement"

Is your hair  "Nappy"  like mine???

The New Black Panther Party for Self Defense takes its name from the original Black Panther Party, formed by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, in 1966. The original Panthers (at right) combined militant black nationalism with Marxism and advocated black empowerment and self-defense, often through confrontation. By 1969, the group had an estimated 5,000 members spread throughout 20 chapters around the country. In the early 1970s, however, the group lost momentum and most of its support due to internal disputes, violent clashes with police and infiltration by law enforcement agencies. Despite the collapse, the group's mystique continued to influence radicals, and by the early 1990s a new generation of militant activists began to model themselves after the original Panthers.

The roots of the New Black Panthers can be traced to Michael McGee, a former member of the original Panthers, who was elected to the Milwaukee City Council in Wisconsin in 1984. In 1987, in response to what he viewed as a crisis in the city's black community, McGee threatened to disrupt "Summerfest" events "and other white people's fun" throughout the city unless more jobs were created for black people. He eventually backed off, instead leading demonstrations to call attention to black unemployment.

In 1990, at a "state of the inner city" press conference at city hall, McGee - then a Milwaukee alderman - announced his intention to create the Black Panther Militia unless the problems of the inner-city improved. He sought to enlist street gangs in the militia and provide them with weapons training. "They can fight and they already know how to shoot," he said. "I'm going to give them a cause to die for." By 1995, McGee threatened, the militia would carry out violent attacks in the city against "the government, the big private interests, the multi-millionaires."

Two months later, McGee organized a public meeting to recruit members to the Black Panther Militia at a local public school. Although dressed in black fatigues reminiscent of the original Panthers, McGee told the crowd of 300 that he was "not advocating what the Black Panthers were advocating. Our militia will be about violence. I'm talking actual fighting, bloodshed and urban guerilla warfare."

In 1992 he again threatened to launch violent attacks on the city, this time if he was not re-elected as alderman. But as the election neared, he recanted, saying that he "proved [his] point" and that he was "getting back into the system." He eventually lost his seat to a police sergeant.

By that time, McGee had already helped organize a chapter of the Black Panther Militia in Indianapolis that was led by Mmoja Ajabu, a black Muslim. McGee also inspired the establishment of a similar group in Dallas, which, under the leadership of Aaron Michaels, would become the founding chapter of the NBPP.

Michaels (at right), born Aaron McCarthy in Dallas, had worked at various Christian radio stations in the city before he started producing Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price's nightly radio show "Talkback" in 1990. He credits Price, who made a name for himself organizing a series of confrontational protests in the Dallas area, with introducing him to black nationalist ideology. When Michael McGee appeared on "Talkback" in 1990, Price urged his listeners to give money to the Black Panther Militia.

Inspired by McGee's appearance, in 1990 Michaels organized a group of like-minded followers, which he named after the original Panthers; he registered the New Black Panther Party name in 1991. Like McGee's Black Panther Militia, Michaels' NBPP borrowed the militant style and confrontational tactics from the original Panthers while ignoring some of its core principles and community service programs. "Survival programs are good, but they don't make us free," Michaels said.

The group apparently established a nationwide base during the next few years. On May 29, 1993, the Dallas chapter hosted a "National Black Power Summit and Youth Rally," which drew about 200 people. Speaking at the rally, McGee claimed that chapters had formed in 20 cities. In an effort to make common cause in favor of racial separatism, white supremacist Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance was also invited to speak. He told the audience that he believed in achieving goals "by whatever means necessary."

McGee's involvement with the NBPP eventually faded, but under Michaels' leadership the New Black Panthers expanded their activity and membership, and more fully embraced racist leaders, most notably http://www.adl.org/special_reports/khalid_own_words/khalid_own_words.asp - Khallid Abdul Muhammad .

Muhammad (at left), who was born Harold Moore Vann in Houston, joined the Nation of Islam after hearing Louis Farrakhan - then Elijah Muhammad's "National Representative" - at New Orleans' Dillard University in 1967. After Muhammad died in 1975, and his son Warith Deen Mohammed began to steer the group toward a non-racist, more traditional form of Islam, Farrakhan elected to perpetuate the father's separatist teachings by forming his own organization (in 1978). Many members followed him, including Khallid Muhammad, who was appointed West Coast Regional Minister and Minister of NOI Mosque No. 27 in Los Angeles

Muhammad was transferred to Atlanta in the mid-1980s and became minister of the city's NOI mosque. In February 1988, he was sentenced to three years in prison for trying to obtain a home mortgage by using a false social security number; he was released after serving nine months. Despite these difficulties, he had become one of Farrakhan's most trusted advisors and in 1990 was appointed Minister of Mosque No. 7 in New York, one of the most prestigious appointments in the NOI. A year later, Muhammad was named Farrakhan's national spokesman.

Muhammad's rise through the group's hierarchy was abruptly halted in November 1993, after he delivered a notoriously anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, homophobic and racist speech at New Jersey's Kean College. In his remarks, Muhammad referred to Jews as "bloodsuckers," called for genocide against whites, vulgarly ridiculed Pope John Paul II and demeaned homosexuals. The speech attracted significant media attention, and Muhammad was condemned by a wide range of religious and political leaders - including the U.S. Congress, which issued a condemnation in 1994 that decried the speech as "outrageous hatemongering of the most vicious and vile kind." Farrakhan responded to the controversy by removing Muhammad from the group's leadership, although the NOI leader noted that he faulted only the form, not "the truth," of Muhammad's remarks.

By the summer of 1998, Muhammad had eclipsed Michaels and became de facto leader of the party. He took on high-profile, racially charged causes and sought to recruit young men attracted to his racist message and militant tone. Michaels, while still active in Dallas, accepted the less significant role of "Minister of Defense." ^{http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/Black_Panther.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=3&item=Black_Panther#f1 - 1}

Quannel X restrained by police at rally in Jasper, Texas.

In June 1998, Muhammad led a group of fifty NBPP followers to Jasper, Texas - including a dozen carrying shotguns and rifles - to "protect" the streets in the wake of the racial murder of James Byrd Jr. Byrd, a forty-nine-year-old African American, who was beaten and fatally dragged behind a pickup truck down a rural road by three white supremacists. In response to a rally organized by Klansmen in the small town two weeks later, Muhammad and his followers, many wearing black berets like the original Panthers, showed up to counter demonstrate. When members of the NBPP tried and failed to get past police separating them from the Klan, Muhammad told his cadre, "Black people, we can take these bastards…We can run over the damn police and take their ass. Who's with me?" There were several minor scuffles between supporters on both sides and two arrests were made.

After the Jasper protest, Muhammad concentrated on organizing his most ambitious event to date, which he called the "Million Youth March." The purpose of the march was to promote unity among young African Americans by bringing black teenagers from around the nation to Harlem to celebrate "Black Power in the Year 2000." The march would also provide a forum to showcase the emergent NBPP as an alternative to other groups interested in guiding black youth, specifically the NOI. In fact, the march was scheduled to coincide with the NOI-backed Million Youth Movement, an event that similarly tried to gather black youth in Atlanta, where they would hear from a coalition of mainstream national black leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

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Look to the skies and keep your eyes on the prize! I been through Hell but, STILL I RISE!

Are you grew for change?

Are you happy with the situation you and you family live in?

Talk to me!