Texas Black History Preservation Project
Documenting the Complete African American Experience in Texas -- "Know your history, know yourself"
TBHPP Bookshelf
Published scholarship on black history in Texas is growing
and we'd like to share with you some suggested readings,
both current and past, from some of the preeminent history
scholars in Texas and beyond. This list will grow and we
welcome your suggestions for additions.
Contact us if you'd
like to submit a book review.

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Featured Publication
Cutting Along the Color Line
Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America
Edited by Quincy T. Mills

       Not specifically a title focusing on black history in Texas, but we came across this book and couldn't
resist presenting it given that the first black barber college was founded in Tyler by
Henry Miller Morgan in
1933. Morgan established Tyler Barber College, the first national chain of barber colleges for African
Americans, with schools located from Texas to New York. At one time, almost 80 percent of all black
barbers in America were trained at Morgan’s schools.
     
       B
lack-owned barber shops play a central role in African American public life. The intimacy of
commercial grooming encourages both confidentiality and camaraderie, which make the barber shop an
important gathering place for African American men to talk freely. But for many years preceding and even
after the Civil War, black barbers endured a measure of social stigma for perpetuating inequality: though
the profession offered economic mobility to black entrepreneurs, black barbers were obliged by custom to
serve an exclusively white clientele. Quincy T. Mills traces the lineage from these nineteenth-century
barbers to the bustling enterprises of today, demonstrating that the livelihood offered by the service
economy was crucial to the development of a black commercial sphere and the barber shop as a
democratic social space.
       "Cutting Along the Color Line" chronicles the cultural history of black barber shops as businesses and
civic institutions. Through several generations of barbers, Mills examines the transition from slavery to
freedom in the nineteenth century, the early twentieth-century expansion of black consumerism, and the
challenges of professionalization, licensing laws, and competition from white barbers. He finds that the
profession played a significant though complicated role in twentieth-century racial politics: while the
services of shaving and grooming were instrumental in the creation of socially acceptable black masculinity,
barbering permitted the financial independence to maintain public spaces that fostered civil rights politics.
This sweeping, engaging history of an iconic cultural establishment shows that black entrepreneurship was
intimately linked to the struggle for equality.


About the author:

     Quincy T. Mills is a Chicago native and an associate professor of history at Vassar College. He teaches
and conducts research in African American history focusing on black social movements and financial
security. Among his other works, he coauthored “Truth and Soul: Black Talk in the Barbershop.”
Published scholarship on black history in Texas is growing and we'd like to share with you some suggested readings, both current and past,
from some of the preeminent history scholars in Texas and beyond. Each week, we will offer a featured selection. Check back regularly as
our list grows. We welcome suggestions and reviews.  -- Eds.
University of Pennsylvania
Press