Customer Reviews

Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Douglas Bristol has written a stylish volume on a subject too long denied a chair at the panel for black history month: the important role of the black barber in American history, especially in the antebellum period. Another Douglas - Douglas Bushman - wrote tellingly of the transformation in American society through the movement of refinement. Doug Bristol shows how the black barber or Knight of the Razor brought a particular "edge" to the general movement of refinement. Of course this progress of black barbers was earned by a trade-off with racialist views of white clients. Professor Bristol is alert to this difficulty but it does not in any way blunt his celebratory treatment of the black barber.

His book is suffused with the names and background of individual barbers, slaves and freedmen. From a personal point of view, I was gladdened to see the story of Pierre Toussaint told in full detail. Toussaint of course was much more than a hairdresser, yet his relationship with his white clients took rise from his craft. Eliza Hamilton Schuyler, granddaughter of the Secretary of the Treasury referred to his "humble calling" after she attended the Toussaint funeral, a standing room only Mass at Old St. Peter's on Barclay St. Yet in Toussaint's will, he speaks of "his friends, the Schuyler family" with perfect amicability. Gone are any seams that might suggest class division or separation by race. If he had a humble calling, it hardly prevented him from forming a bond, eminently personal with New York's Knickerbocracy.

Professor Bristol's polished account serves as a corrective to those works on black history which have demanded that only a "protest-lion" was worth considering. While Knights of the Razor does not underrate those blacks who stood up for principle in a confrontational stance, the book declares on behalf of the black barber whose achievements are underscored. These ought you to have done, and left the others not undone.

KNIGHTS OF THE RAZOR: BLACK BARBERS IN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM offers a fine survey of black barbers who barbered in antebellum St. Louis - and who enjoyed an uncommon privilege of free speech with the white clients they shaved. This untold story of black barbers in North and South from the American Revolution to World War I is key for any college-level collection strong in civil rights history.