Cornrows equal liberty?? Like for real? ?😦😦

Hello, my lovelies. So.........what next?

Today I'll be addressing a more traditional issue 😊

Very interesting and of great historic importance. 😉

Ok so over the years or let's say, from the past decade cornrows have been in fashion, hairdressers have also helped us African and African American young and old women rock the cornrows our ancestors left us. But apart from laying your edges and taking all of those "slay " selfies. There's something more Deep and interesting about these cornrows.

Let the games begin. 😁

In many African societies, braid patterns and hairstyles indicate a person’s community, age, marital status, wealth, power, social position, and religion. In the Caribbean, the style may be referred to as cane rows to represent “slaves planting sugar cane”, and not corn. Lol.

The style consists of braiding the “hair very close to the scalp in an underhand, upward motion in order to create a single line of raised row, creating the cornrow”.

Historically, male styling with cornrows can be traced as far back as the early nineteenth century to Ethiopia, where warriors and kings such as Tewodros II and Yohannes IV were depicted wearing cornrows.

Yohannes IV in cornrows😌

Now to the main event. How are cornrows related to our freedom? 😌

During the Atlantic Slave Trade, many slaves were forced to shave their hair to be more ‘sanitary’ and to also move them away from their culture and identity.But not all enslaved Africans would not keep their hairs cut. Many would braid their hairs tightly in cornrows and more “to maintain a neat and tidy appearance”. Enslaved Africans also used cornrows to transfer and create maps to leave plantations and the home of their captors. This act of using hair as a tool for resistance is said to have been evident across South America. It is most documented in Colombia where Benkos Bioho, a King captured from Africa by the Portuguese who escaped slavery, built San Basilio de Palenque, a village in Northern Colombia around the 17thcentury. Bioho created his own language as well as intelligence network and also came up with the idea to have women create maps and deliver messages through their cornrows.

Slaves at the time were not taught to read or write. But even if they did know how to read and write and got hold of writing materials. They would be in a whole lot of trouble if their masters found out that they had "escape plans". Lol. Or even worse. Could read and write.

If their masters happen to find out, they would be immediately sold off or even worse...killed to serve as an example to any other slave who tried to be smart.

So the Best option was to use their hair to draw these maps. And to be honest. This was a very creative and artistic method they deployed to lead us to freedom!

“In the time of slavery in Colombia, hair braiding was used to relay messages. For example, to signal that they wanted to escape, women would braid a hairstyle called departes. “It had thick, tight braids, braided closely to the scalp and was tied into buns on the top.

And another style had curved braids, tightly braided on their heads. The curved braids would represent the roads they would [use to] escape. In the braids, they also kept gold and hid seeds which, in the long run, helped them survive after they escaped.”

But now what do we see?