Tag: history

The following lesson comes from a conversation with Alexander Parker 81, Barber Shop Owner. “You know, I could teach these young boys a thing or two about cuttin’ heads, about making money cuttin’ heads.” I’ve had my license for 64 years and still can’t teach them nothin’. They know it all. Well there’s such a thing as being “over learned.

My first barber job was in Davidson, North Carolina, a small college town in a rural county. The shop was owned by Ralph Johnson. He was black but he look white. All his customers were white: farmers, professors, students. Back in those days you couldn’t cut white heads and black head in the same shop. You had to choose. Ralph and I couldn’t even give each other a cut during business hours. Ralph said a man made a better livin’ with “CW” on his permit, so that’s what I chose. “CW” meant colored cuttin’ white folks hair. “CC” meant colored folks hair.

I learned a lot from Ralph and I try to pass it down, but these boys won’t listen. Some barbers want to make money and some barbers want to make noise. The young guys get too friendly with the customers, talkin’ all the time. You should have a new head in your chair every fifteen minutes. Four and thirty-two. That’s the formula. Four heads and hour, thirty-two heads a day-forty on Saturday. In my day I was a workhorse. But these young guys don’t want to work that hard. And they always want to run have their “social experience” with the girls. Keep it zipped up and you’ll keep somethin’ in your pocket.”

~Alexander Parker licensed since 1952.

The Arthur Anderson Barber Shop in Mattoon, Illinois, which only served white customers circa 1920 (image credit: http://www.eiu.edu/~afriamer/pages/colescounty/index.htm)

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Grahams Barber College

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The most educated people of the first ten centuries after Christ were the monks and priests. Neither nobility nor the masses could read or write. All of the accumulated medical knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had been lost or hid away in the monasteries.

There were no real Physicians or surgeons in this dark period, and most diseases that are commonly curable today were fatal then. Bloodletting and herbal remedies were the accepted methods of curing patients. Phlebotomy or bleeding methods was the first practiced by the clergy who also ran pharmacy shops within the walls of their monasteries.

These monks often enlisted young barbers as medical apprentices. Bloodletting was a messy, time consuming chore, and the boy barbers cold use the extra money.

At the council of Tours in 1168 the clergy were forbidden to draw blood or act as physicians or surgeons in any manner on the grounds that such practices were sacrilegious. Many barber moved out of the churches into private bloodletting establishments.

This began the marriage of shaving, haircutting, tooth-pulling and minor surgery, which went uninterrupted for the nest 600 years. George Washington bleed to death by his personal physician in 1799, after suffering from a windpipe infection. He died calmly counting his own pulse at the age of 67. By 1845, bloodletting instruments had disappeared from most doctor’s satchels.

NOW YOU KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY!!
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Grahams Barber College