As I increase my awareness of my history and integrity of a being Afro-American, I’m thrilled with truly accepting myself. Even more thrilled when I notice other brothas and sistas showing their pride for their “true identity” via their natural hair. Sites like Black Girl with Long Hair is dedicated to supporting individuals rocking the natural hair.

Wearing your hair natural is audacious. Afro-American men (and women) in the early to mid half of the last century wore their hair in the conk style by essentially relaxing it and styling it usually in a pompadour (combing the sides of the hair back and curling the top over itself). Malcolm X, who once wore the conk style said

“How ridiculous I was! This was my first really big step toward self-degradation when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh with lye, in order to cook my natural hair until it was limp, to have it look like a white man’s hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in American who are so brainwashed into believing that the black people are “inferior” – and white people “superior”- that they will even violate their God-created bodies to try to look “pretty” by white standards.”

Wearing your hair natural is more than cool style, it’s a sign of dignity and self-respect in one’s self and race.

Cited Works: Newly Natural, It’s Just Hair – The Conk, 2009