What Readers Are Saying:
“Styling Jim Crow tells of a little sement of black life in days that many of us regret and want to forget. Get a copy of these interesting book and you’ll gain a new appreciation for the accomplishments of a brave group of people.” --Mexia Daily News
“Her book remains an important contribution to understanding how African-American women (and men) often with great resourcefulness and stamina, negotiated the constraints imposed by Jim Crow and built lives for themselves.” --The Women’s Review of Books
“Indeed, one of the distinguishing characteristics of Blackwelder’s account is its astute attention to the myriad, subtle relationships between state political power and the business of beauty. . . This unusual attention to racial inequities in state licensing procedures and requirements marks a particularly important contribution to recent scholarship on the beauty industry. . .this new history opens the door for further exploration of the relationships between church, state, and the care and treatment of the individual body. Styling Jim Crow’s discussion of the interplay of racial segregation and private enterprise should interest many readers of Enterprise & Society, particularly those engaged in understanding the massively lucrative business of beauty.” --Enterprise & Society
“An engaging case study of entrepreneurs in the African American cosmetology industry during the Jim Crow era and beyond. . . The focus on black beauty operators contributes a layer of complexity to tendencies in scholarship to relegate valuation of images of femininity and respectability to the black middle class.” --The Journal of American History
“Julia Kirk Blackwelder’s book, Styling Jim Crow: African American Beauty Training During Segregation, is an important contribution to this scholarship [female entrepreneurship]. . . This is an important insight, but it seems possible that some conflicts between separatist and integrationist ideologies in black beauty education existed nevertheless. . . Styling Jim Crow is a valuable contribution to scholarship on race, gender, and beauty entrepreneurship.” --Journal of American Ethnic History
“Julia Blackwelder documents the history of African-American beauty schools, and shows the crucial economic role and political leadership of black beauticians in the struggle against segregation. Styling Jim Crow reveals a little-known yet significant dimension of American beauty culture.” --Kathy Peiss, author, Hope in a Jar