Read more Chattanooga History Columns
- Gaston: Paul John Kruesi was Edison's right-hand man
- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
Free men of color as well as slaves used their barbering skills to get ahead in early America. Professor Quincy Mills of Vassar College, in his book "Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barbershops in America," pointed out that before the Civil War, black barbers - especially in the South - trimmed primarily white customers. Since black and white men did not customarily share chairs, blacks who wanted a shave and a haircut had to go to their friends' front porches.
In the 1890s, when Jim Crow laws mandated segregation, black barbers began to serve predominantly black patrons. Railroad cars, restaurants and theaters separated into white and black units, and barbershops followed. Barbershops in black communities created a venue for cultural awareness, including discussion of Jim Crow laws.
In his 1904 book, "Biography and Achievements of the Colored Citizens of Chattanooga," local author J. Bliss White identified three barbers as "successful and progressive." J.G. Higgins, who owned the O.K. Shaving Parlor at 911 Market Street, was described as having "one of the prettiest Barber Shops in the City." J.T. Pitts, the son of one of "the leading pioneer families of Griffin, [Georgia]" was "one of the finest tonsorial artists in the country." R.C. Hawkins, a product of Chattanooga Public Schools, worked as a letter carrier and ran the Arcade Barber Shop. Known as "race men," these barbers worked to enhance themselves and their communities by operating successful businesses.
Chattanooga's barbers were unique in being required to have a state license as well as a city license. The Chattanooga Barber Control Board, a voluntary regulatory board, oversaw the city's licenses and inspected all local barber shops. A 1938 ordinance required Chattanooga city barbers to pay a first-time state license fee as well as a first-time city fee. In 1991, the state fee was $35 and the city fee was $25. The city renewal fee was $10 and the state renewal $40. Chattanooga was the only Tennessee city to have this additional requirement. The intent of the ordinance was to ensure that Chattanoogans would receive only "professional" barber services. According to a Feb. 27, 1991, Chattanooga Times article, the ordinance also ensured that nonunion barbers and vagabond hair cutters would not allowed to set up shop. Chattanooga's barbers' control board and the union were discontinued during the 1970s. Current Chattanooga city code declares that barbershops follow Tennessee laws and regulations.
Barbershops were known as private spaces in a public arena. Anyone could visit the shop but the discussions were kept within the shop's four walls. Larry High referred to his barbershop "Bear's Barber Shop" at 3429 Alton Park Boulevard as a "men's social club" in a May 29, 2013, Chattanooga Times Free Press article. Women did come into the shop, some to get their hair cut and others to bring in junior for his first trim.
Ladies finally broke into this male-dominated occupation and became barbers as well. The Chattanooga Observer, the African-American newspaper, printed notice of two women providing first-rate service as men's hair stylists in the 1950s. The first female barber mentioned was Lottie M. Gordon in November 1950. She was a former instructor in the Lidaro Barber College at 218 E. Ninth St. and worked at the Green Light Barber Shop at 219 E. Ninth St. Mr. Betts, proprietor of the shop, welcomed her and assured his customers of only the best service.
The Green Light Barbershop was on E. Ninth Street for several years. The 1990 city directory listed Lottie as retired. By the 1995 city directory, the shop had relocated to Tunnel Boulevard. The last listing in the directory was 2006.
The Observer of March 30 1956, reported that Lucille Favors, formerly Lucille Betts, who had worked at the Green Light Barberhop, moved to become assistant manager at Phantom Barber Shop at 429 E. Ninth St. According to the Observer, she was the first woman in Chattanooga to receive a barber license. In the 1960s, Lucille cut hair at Malone's Drive-In Barber Shop at 1504 E. Third St. She retired by 1980 and died in May 2012. Her obituary on May 18 noted that she was the first black female professional barber in the Chattanooga area.
Suzette Raney is the archivist at the Chattanooga Public Library. For more information on barbershops and beauty salons, visit the Local History Department at the Chattanooga Public Library, 1001 Broad Street, call 423 643-7725 or email sraney@lib.chattanooga.gov. For general information, visit chattahistoricalassoc.org.