Hairdresser

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Article

Branch, Titi Cree  

Robyn McGee

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2018

was born in Queens, New York, to an African American father, Jimmy Branch, who was a businessman, and a Japanese mother, Karen Matsumoto. She had one younger sister, Miko Branch, with whom she would go on to found the Miss Jessie’s brand of salons and products.

The two sisters were inspired to be hair care innovators and entrepreneurs by their paternal grandmother, Miss Jessie, after whom they named their business. Born in Edgecombe County, North Carolina to sharecroppers Ross and Gertrude Pittman, Jessie Mae Pittman married Charlie Branch in 1936 and the couple moved to Poughkeepsie, New York in 1946 They had two children a daughter Hilda and a son Jimmy Titi and Miko s father After the death of her first husband Miss Jessie had two more sons Irvin and Ricardo Dancey Miss Jessie s relationship with George Dancey ended and she wound up being a single parent ...

Article

Hilton, John Telemachus  

Roy E. Finkenbine

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

abolitionist, civil rights activist, and community leader, was born in Pennsylvania. Almost nothing is known of his parents and early life. He relocated to Boston by the mid-1820s and established himself as a hairdresser, a trade that he would pursue most of his life. In 1825 he married the Bostonian Lavinia F. Ames. The couple had six children over the next dozen years: an unnamed daughter who died in 1826, Lucretia (b. 1828), Louisa (b. 1829), John W. (b. 1831), Henry (b. 1834), and Thomas (b. 1837).

In addition to plying his trade and raising a family, Hilton established himself as a leader in Boston's black community by the late 1820s. He joined the African Baptist Church and became a protégé of the Reverend Thomas Paul the congregation s pastor With Paul s guidance he served as a lay leader ...

Article

Pigee, Vera Mae  

Françoise N. Hamlin

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

beautician and civil rights activist, was born Vera Mae Berry in Leflore County, near Glendora, Mississippi, the home of her maternal great grandmother. She was the daughter of Wilder Berry, a barber and tailor, and Lucy Wright Berry. Her father walked away from his livelihood and his young family, leaving her mother to raise Vera and her brother, W. C., in Tutwiler, Tallahatchie County.

Lucy Berry's influence left its mark on her daughter. With only an eighth-grade education, she raised livestock and a garden while also working in the fields and as a domestic, so her children never felt the hunger of poverty, unlike the sharecroppers around them in the Delta. As an adult, Vera Pigee remembered her mother's resistance to white racism, a tenacious and dangerous stance in the Mississippi Delta during the years of Jim Crow Her good work and diligence made her a ...

Article

Potter, Eliza  

Kathryn L. Staley

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

lady's maid, hairdresser, and author, was presumably born free in Cincinnati or New York. Little is known about her childhood and personal life in general. She was raised in New York but her parents' names are unknown. One biographer lists her maiden name as Johnson and another states that she was the former Mrs. Johnson but neither provides a source. As a child she apparently did not obtain extensive education and began working as a domestic while young.

Most information about Potter stems from the anonymously published A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life (1859 At the time of publication it was universally attributed to her however within her work she masked most of her private life and instead described her clientele According to the autobiography Potter moved to Buffalo committed a weakness and married Potter 12 Ever private she neglects to mention to whom she ...

Article

Redden, Idessa Williams  

Pam Brooks

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

civil rights activist and community leader, was born Idessa Taylor in Montgomery, Alabama, the only child of Minnie Oliver. Other than the surname he shared with his daughter, Idessa Taylor's father's name is not recorded. Upon the early death of her mother when she was only two, Redden's maternal great grandparents, Luisa and Julius Harris, raised Redden in Montgomery until she was nine. Thereafter, her mother's brother, Robert Oliver, a railroad worker, and his wife, Dinah Beatrice Oliver a seamstress included Redden in their family of six children Redden attended St Paul s Methodist Church School Loveless School St John s Catholic School and State Normal High School in Montgomery As an elementary student on her way to school she had to endure the habitual taunts of young white boys In a videotaped interview on her ninetieth birthday Redden recounted one occasion when in retaliation for ...

Article

Simon, Rogers  

Glenn Caldwell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2014

innovative Harlem hair stylist and jazz/pop songwriter, was born in Timmonsville, South Carolina, the second eldest of thirteen children of Floyd Sr. and Ethel Simon. Simon's formative years were spent in the segregated and racially tense era of the Jim Crow South but his parents never allowed him or his siblings to hate whites based on unequal laws and hostile treatment toward blacks. His positive nature and sense of style—traits that he learned from his mother—allowed him to be respected by all and would be a major part of his character for the rest of his life. He did not know, in his youth, that the “sense of style” part of his personality would play a major role in his life of hair, song writing, and entertainment.

In 1940 Simon completed his early education at the segregated Brockington School in Timmonsville He made several attempts to further his ...

Article

Toussaint, Pierre  

Richard S. Newman

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
31 May 2017

leading citizen of color in nineteenth-century New York City, was born enslaved in 1766 in French colonial Saint Domingue Pierre was owned by Jean Berard a sugar planter who resided outside of Saint Marc in the western section of the prosperous French colony Pierre came of age in a colony dominated by bondage and death with masters importing as many as 30 000 enslaved people each year by the second half of the eighteenth century to replenish depleted plantations However Pierre was utilized predominantly as a household servant A talented and precocious lad he acquired literacy skills as well as a courtly sensibility which he maintained for the rest of his life in and out of slavery Though Berard family lore claims credit for encouraging Pierre s talents it may have been his enslaved grandmother Zenobie a wet nurse and household servant who had accompanied Bernard s eldest son ...

Article

Toussaint, Pierre  

Thomas J. Shelley

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
21 January 1999
Published online:
01 December 2006

Toussaint, Pierre (1766–30 June 1853), businessman and philanthropist, was born a slave in the French colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti). Little is known of his early life except that, like his mother and maternal grandmother, he spent his youth as a house slave on a plantation in the Artibonite Valley in central Haiti near the port of Saint Marc. In the library of the plantation owner, Pierre Bérard, young Toussaint discovered the works of classical French preachers such as Bossuet and Massillon. Apparently it was from his reading of these sermons, rather than from any contact with the notoriously corrupt local clergy, that Toussaint developed his deep devotion to the Catholic faith.

In 1787 as political conditions on the island deteriorated Jean Jacques Bérard who had inherited his father s estate left Saint Domingue for New York accompanied by his wife Pierre Toussaint and four other slaves ...

Article

Toussaint, Pierre  

Lisa Clayton Robinson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Born in Haiti, Pierre Toussaint was a slave until 1809. After his owners moved from Haiti to New York City in 1787 he was apprenticed to a New York hairdresser Toussaint eventually developed his own thriving career and supported his widowed mistress and her daughter with his ...

Article

Toussaint, Pierre  

Thomas J. Shelley

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

hairdresser, businessman, and philanthropist, was born a slave in the French colony of Saint Domingue (later Haiti). The names of his parents are unknown. Little is known of his early life except that, like his mother and maternal grandmother, he spent his youth as a house slave on a plantation in the Artibonite Valley near the port of Saint Marc. In the library of the plantation owner, Pierre Bérard, young Toussaint discovered the works of classical French preachers such as Bossuet and Massillon. Apparently it was from his reading of these sermons, rather than from any contact with the notoriously corrupt local clergy, that Toussaint developed his deep devotion to the Catholic faith. The main source for information on Toussaint's life is his autobiography, Memoir of Pierre Toussaint, Born a Slave in Saint Domingo, which was published anonymously by Hannah Lee Sawyer a contemporary ...

Article

Toussaint, Pierre  

David N. Gellman

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
06 April 2006
Published online:
01 December 2006

Pierre Toussaint was a singular, yet elusive figure. The quality of his life moved some to call for his beatification as a Catholic saint in the twentieth century. His motivations and commitments as a historical figure—including his place in the history of free black life in antebellum New York City—are harder to pin down. Although he made monetary contributions to African American causes in New York and elsewhere, many of the most noteworthy beneficiaries of his assistance and sympathy were whites, with whom he forged unusually cordial connections during an era of increasing segregation and racial hostility.

Toussaint was born a slave in the French sugar colony of Saint Domingue; his year of birth has traditionally been listed as 1766, but a 1995 reassessment estimates 1778 as a more likely date, while another biographer proposes 1781 as Toussaint s birth year His mother and grandmother were house slaves ...

Article

Vílchez, Agustín  

Elizeth Payne Iglesias

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
31 May 2017

of black or mulato (mixed race) origin, was born in León, Nicaragua. He was born and raised at the home of Joaquín Arrechavala Vílchez (1728–1823), the wealthiest Spaniard in the city of León, a colonel in the Spanish militia, and a fervent champion of the monarchy during the Central American period of independence. Information on Agustín Vílchez’s likely parentage comes from Arrechavala himself, who in a letter dated 1806 calls him son on various occasions and refers to him in very affectionate terms His mother s name and ethnic origin remain unknown However Vílchez speaks of the smallness and baseness of my obscure birth suggesting his mother could have been a slave or a servant in the paternal household He signed his name as Agustín de Vílchez This de either brought him closer to his Spanish origins or bore evidence of his closeness to the Hispanic Creole ...