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  Walker wasn’t the only entrepreneur to get rich by addressing Black women’s desire—and to some extent, social need—to straighten their hair. In 1909, Garrett Morgan, the inventor of the gas mask and the three-position traffic light, set about finding a way to prevent a sewing machine’s needle from burning the fabric it was working on. A chemical solution he created solved the problem. He also noticed that it made the fibers of the pony-fur cloth he used to clean his hands stand straight up. When he applied the liquid to his neighbor’s curly-haired dog, it made the dog’s hair so straight its owner no longer recognized it—or so the story goes. After Morgan applied the solution to his own hair and got the same result, the G. A. Morgan Hair Refining Company—and the highly lucrative (and highly damaging) lye relaxer industry—was born.

  It’s now estimated that more than 65 percent of all the Black women in the United States chemically straighten their hair. In her 1996 book Skin Trade, Ann DuCille, an English professor at Wesleyan University, suggests a reason: “Unless I have missed a few pageants along the way, the body types, the apparel, and the hairstyles of the Black women crowned Miss America or of the colored women crowned Miss America have differed little from those of the white contestants . . . We have yet to see Miss America or Black Miss Universe with an Afro or cornrows or dreadlocks.”

  Fortunately, over the course of the past several decades, a movement has (re)emerged that’s helped Black women embrace their natural hair. Some consider it the second wave of the Natural Hair Movement from the sixties, while others refer to the trend as the Texture Movement. We’re now seeing Black celebrities such as Esperanza Spalding, Solange Knowles, Janelle Monáe, Lupita Nyong’o, Viola Davis, and Tracee Ellis Ross “slaying” with their textured hair and #BlackGirlMagic. Inspired by these women, many young Black girls are starting to wear their hair naturally, sending a message to the world about how they want to be viewed and how they view themselves. Sadly, the establishment’s response hasn’t always been favorable.

  This issue gained national attention in September 2013, when administrators at Deborah Brown Community School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, informed the parents of seven-year-old Tiana Parker that their daughter’s locs violated the school’s dress-code policy, which reads, “Hairstyles such as dreadlocks, afros, and other faddish styles are unacceptable.” The idea of having to cut off all her hair upset Tiana so much she opted to switch schools instead. Two months later, administrators at Faith Christian Academy in Orlando, Florida, gave twelve-year-old Vanessa VanDyke a week to cut or straighten her big and bold natural hairstyle, calling it a “distraction.” In 2016, Pretoria High School for Girls in South Africa banned afros and called natural Black hair styles “untidy.” What sort of message do these incidents send to little Black girls?

  That Donna’s five-year-old daughter Jessica was so entranced with the white college intern’s hair and so disappointed in her own underscored the otherness of Black hair in the same way that having strangers in Montana paw at my siblings’ hair did.*

  “I wish I had your hair,” she said to the intern.

  When the intern, clueless about what was happening to Jessica’s self-esteem, thanked her and got up to leave, it sickened me. I walked over and said, “Jessica, your hair is so beautiful. I wish I had your hair.”

  Her smile returned, and she ran off to play with the other kids.

  Whenever I wore braids, Jessica and the other little girls at church would smile at me and say, “You have hair just like me!” as they swung their braids back and forth. At a certain point, I began to feel that if I didn’t wear my hair in braids I was reinforcing European beauty standards among the young girls in the community I lived in, and that was not something I wanted to support.

  Something else happened when I wore braids. People started responding to me differently. Because I truly owned the look, my hair seemed to reinforce the belief that I was a biracial or light-skinned Black woman. Because I felt Black, I liked being seen as Black, not as a white girl with braids like Bo Derek in the movie 10. When other people assumed I was Black, it invited me to interact with them as a Black woman, which always felt perfectly natural to me.

  This made for some interesting social interactions. White people often approached me and said that my hair looked like rope or yarn. They asked if I could wash it, if it hurt, if it was “real.” It was annoying and frustrating, and encouraged me to avoid interacting with them as much as I possibly could.

  My hair never discomfited Black people. Quite the opposite. They seemed much more relaxed in my presence when I wore braids. Many described my hair as being “so Rachel.” Even when I hadn’t been in the sun for a while and my skin was extra pale, they still didn’t see me as white. People often told me, “You’re a pretty biracial,” or “You’re the prettiest albino I’ve ever seen.” Others insisted they had a family member—if not two or three—who was even lighter than I was. I lost track of how many people said something to me that affirmed that my look perfectly matched how I felt inside, and every time, I felt even more at home, as if my light skin was no longer a barrier to being seen as who I really was.

  *Those looking for a positive example of a Black child responding to his own hair need look no further than President Obama in 2009 bowing down to let a five-year-old Black boy named Jacob Philadelphia touch his hair after the boy wondered if his hair was just like the president’s.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Adopting a New Dad I

  WHILE I WAS AT BELHAVEN, I returned to Montana to see my siblings as often as I could. My visits grew increasingly awkward as time passed. People in town would stare at my braids and my dashikis as though they belonged to an alien. They didn’t know what to make of me and appeared utterly perplexed whenever they saw me. As alienating as their reactions were, they were more charitable than the ones I received from Larry and Ruthanne, who were clearly embarrassed by my new look.

  I was equally embarrassed by them, as the news from home was never very good. Larry had been indicted for felony theft after allegedly filing false claims for meal and mileage expenses while working as a county commissioner. After adopting the babies, he and Ruthanne had switched churches from Troy Christian Fellowship to the Yaak Community Church, which was about an hour’s drive north of our house, and every Sunday Larry would “check the county roads” on his way to church. Inspecting roads and the work done by road crews was part of his job description, but, as some pointed out, those roads certainly didn’t need to be inspected every Sunday. Nevertheless, he still billed Lincoln County for the mileage he accrued driving to and from church week after week and got reimbursed for it. The charges were eventually dropped, but the damage was done. In 1998, he lost his bid for reelection.

  On another occasion, I learned that Larry had taken my dog Harold up the mountain and shot him. Harold was less than eight years old, not terribly old by dog standards, but Larry said that Harold was hit by a car on the road below our house and his leg was broken. Larry didn’t believe in spending money on animals when they got hurt or sick. For years, Harold had loyally and enthusiastically chased deer away from our gardens and barked whenever a bear raided our apple tree. Once he could no longer perform those tasks and lost his utilitarian value, Larry put a bullet in his head.

  Because of such callousness, I began to grow even more distant from Larry and Ruthanne, and as I did, I found solace in all the love I received from the West Jackson community, where I lived, worshiped, and socialized. In many Black communities such as this one, it’s not unusual for people to refer to each other using familial titles, even though they don’t have an actual biological connection. While living with Donna and Sam Pollard, it wasn’t long before I was calling her “Mom,” him “Dad,” and their children my brothers and sisters. I did the same with the Perkinses. I truly felt like I was part of their family, and as a way of expressing this love I called Spencer “Dad,” his older sister “Aunt Joanie,” her husband “Uncle Ron,” Spencer’s father “Grandpa Perkins,�
�� and Spencer’s mother “Grandma Perkins.”* Because this is a common practice in the Black community, particularly amongst regular churchgoers, the gesture was received kindly.

  It also seemed perfectly natural. More than anyone I’d ever known, Spencer felt like a father to me, a notion strengthened by the fact that my biological one did not. I went to church with him and Nancy so often that some people in the community assumed I was their daughter, and the fact that Nancy was white only reinforced the idea. However, just to be clear, Spencer never would have identified me as Black. More likely, he would have called me “a different kind of white person” who was unlike most of the other white people he knew, even those at VOC.

  Of all Spencer’s admirable qualities, his commitment to Antioch was one of his greatest, as the community was a living embodiment of his belief that Black people and white people not only could live together in harmony but that they should. Ask anyone who’s ever lived in a cooperative living situation what it was like, and you’ll get responses that run the gamut from “Unbelievable! It was Heaven!” to “Unbelievable! It was Hell!” During the seventeen years Spencer and Chris Rice lived together at Antioch, their relationship knew incredible highs and lows and everything in between. The two men had very different styles, so challenging situations were bound to arise. After spending so much time in such close proximity, they eventually began to resent each other, both of them clinging to a list of grievances about the other and refusing to let go. By the time I’d arrived in Mississippi, they could barely stand to eat their meals at the same table, and like an old married couple who’s fallen out of love, they were prepared to go their separate ways.

  In the fall of 1997, when I was a sophomore at Belhaven, Chris and his wife Donna wrote a letter that revealed the extent of their dismay and shared it at one of the community’s meetings. It was time for them to leave Antioch, they informed the rest of the group. Many of the residents commiserated with them, but Spencer bristled at what he felt was an act of betrayal. In a desperate attempt to heal their relationship and avoid a nasty split, they had John Alexander, founder of the evangelical magazine The Other Side and pastor of the Church of the Sojourners in San Francisco, come to Mississippi to counsel them. Alexander reminded them that Jesus was at the center of their community, not either one of them.

  Alexander’s advice had a deep impact on Spencer. Previously, the whole premise for his racial reconciliation movement required white people to remain white and Black people to remain Black, and for the two sides to harmonize. Now suddenly he’d experienced a shift of insight in which he encouraged others to cultivate what he called “a culture of Grace.” He no longer advocated changing the attitudes of the members of each racial group one person at a time but asked us instead to change our perceptions about the groups themselves.

  On October 18, 1997, Spencer found the grace to retract the scorn he’d previously directed at Chris. “I want Chris and Donna to be happy,” he said, “even if it means them leaving.”

  That was all it took to convince Chris to stay.

  The grace and forgiveness the two men shared with each other had a ripple effect on their ministry. Two months later, they convened twenty-five Black Christian leaders and twenty-five white Christian leaders for a dialogue on racial reconciliation. The ensuing conversation was so honest and powerful it brought Aunt Joanie to tears and convinced her to start forgiving white people, something she’d vowed never to do after her father had been beaten in jail by a white sheriff in 1970.

  The following month, Spencer and Chris hosted a conference on racial reconciliation at Belhaven and I participated by displaying some of my artwork. The first night of the conference, I was supposed to go out to dinner with Adrian “Buddy” Lee. This was the first real date I’d ever been on in my entire life. In the two and a half years I’d been at Belhaven, I’d somehow managed to turn down every single guy who’d asked me out. I didn’t reject them because I wasn’t curious about or interested in romance and sex. I did it because I was scared that I would be punished with eternal damnation. Larry and Ruthanne had taught me that sex was for procreation, not enjoyment, that it should be saved for marriage, and that once I was married I must “lie completely still” as my husband completed the task. Following these rules, I came to fear not only sex but intimacy and relationships as well.

  This isn’t to say that guys weren’t interested in me. In fact, my lack of interest seemed to make me more attractive to them. One guy in particular took all my polite rejections as invitations. A star player on the basketball team, Clarence was used to getting what he wanted. During my freshman year, he would call me from time to time and say he was going to break into my dorm room and have his way with me. As aggressive as his advances were, I didn’t report them. The deck was already stacked against the Black students on our predominantly white campus, and I didn’t want to make life any harder for Clarence.

  I was also confused because when he said, “You know you want it,” it was kind of true. I did want it—but at the same time I didn’t. I had a burning desire to lose my “V-card” and plenty of sex drive, but I couldn’t allow this to happen because of the high-minded notions that had been drilled into my head. Just masturbating was sinful, so going any further than that was unimaginable to me. The solution to my quandary was bad for the basketball team and worse for Clarence’s future: poor grades forced him to drop out of school.

  Somehow Buddy Lee managed to put an end to my no-dating policy. When he asked me out after we’d been “just good friends” for two and a half years, I accepted. I got all dressed up and was excited about the prospect of dating him. He was biracial—his mother was Italian and his father was Black—and cute and charismatic. However, he was also a bit of a player, so I wanted to see what Spencer thought of him before I went out with him.

  When I introduced Buddy to Spencer at the conference, Spencer took Buddy’s hand in his and said with genuine conviction, “Wow, it’s a real pleasure to meet you. You must be an amazing person if Rachel has decided to go out with you.”

  Buddy must have walked away from that conversation feeling pretty good about himself, but I understood the true meaning behind Spencer’s words. He didn’t have to spell it out for me. This was Spencer’s way of telling me that Buddy had better be an extraordinary individual or I shouldn’t go out with him. Was Buddy amazing? No, he was not. He was a smooth-talking ladies’ man who was on a very different path than me when it came to romance (he was far from a virgin) and religion (he wasn’t a committed Christian). I deserved better. When Spencer offered advice, I took it. Buddy Lee and I got some ice cream after the conference, but that was the last date I ever had with him.

  On the final day of the conference Spencer suffered a diabetic seizure and passed out. Rejuvenated by his reconciliation with Chris, he insisted he was healthy enough to deliver the event’s closing address, a speech entitled “Playing the Grace Card.” In it, he addressed the rift he’d had with Chris and the understanding they’d come to, and he used it as an example of what needed to be done on a much larger scale to achieve racial reconciliation in the United States.

  “At our relationship’s weakest moment, Chris and I saw, as clearly as we had ever seen anything, that only by giving each other grace could we find healing and restoration,” he told the audience. “We could either hold on to our grievances, demanding that all our hurts be redressed, or we could follow God’s example, give each other grace, and trust God for the lack. We chose grace.”

  That night, Spencer was even more honest and blunt than usual in his discussion of the racial problem, including himself in the list of “African Americans who are growing tired of the tiptoeing that takes place in so many racial reconciliation gatherings.” “For us,” he continued, “it is time to move into deeper waters.”

  He went on to describe the “safe, time-tested method for emotionally dealing with whites” that many Black people rely on. “There is an automatic mental procedure that takes place fo
r many Blacks upon first meeting a white. First a decision must be made as to whether or not we will give him or her the time of day. If so, then, immediately the ‘Is he for real or phony?’ antennas are raised, the ‘white superiority’ sensors powered up, and the ‘racism’ detector activated—all in an effort to analyze quickly any ‘vibes’ and interpret any data, verbal or nonverbal, from the subject. All this is necessary to determine whether the white person deserves special consideration as an ‘individual,’ that is, a ‘good white person,’ or as a ‘typical’ white person who should be quickly relegated to the simple category ‘white folks,’ as in, ‘You know how white folks is.’”

  He acknowledged that this sort of judgement, although understandably caused by pain, was unfair, and advocated letting go of the pejorative “white folks” label, viewing each white person as an individual, and responding with “Christ-like compassion and kindness” to people instead of judging their worthiness first.

  “Although we must continue to speak on behalf of those who are oppressed and warn oppressors,” he said toward the end of his speech that evening, “my willingness to forgive them is not dependent on how they respond. Being able to extend grace and to forgive people sets us free. We no longer need to spend precious emotional energy thinking about the day oppressors will get what they deserve. What I am learning about grace lifts a weight from my shoulders, which is nothing short of invigorating.”