Thinking About The Doo-Rag

Recently I saw a young black man with a gray doo-rag standing at the corner of 116th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. That got me to thinking about the origin of the doo-rag  (or du-rag, as it is spelled sometimes).

I haven't bothered to look it up on Wikipedia or the Urban Dictionary (yet). After giving it much thought, I concluded that the often-seen urban headwear called the doo-rag is short for "hairdo"and that in the days when many black men wore processed, that is, chemically straightened hair, they wore this skullcap-like headwear to keep the hair in place and to absorb hair grease and sweat. And the "rag" part of the term refers to it being made from some kind of cloth.

I do remember seeing men wear on their head what looked like a woman's nylon stocking rolled up to fit the head. Today's doo-rag more than likely is a more masculine-looking variation. Not everyone is enamored of it, however. I have seen signs posted on the doors and windows of nightlife establishments in Harlem prohibiting patrons from entering the premises wearing hoodies and doo-rags. I think they associate these forms of headwear with street gang attire.


Note: Tomorrow is the first day of Autumn. So long, Summer, it was great knowing you. See you again next year, God willing!

A Singer And His Hat

I like Happy, the hit song by Pharrell Williams, but I hate the hat he's always seen wearing. It looks like someone sat on it before Williams put it on his head.

African-American Cartoonist Morrie Turner Dies At 90

Morrie Turner, the African-American cartoonist, who drew the Wee Pals comic strip, died last month at age 90. The Los Angeles Times obituary writer (January 29, 2014) wrote that Turner started Wee Pals in 1965, "soon populating the strip with clever kids spanning a rainbow of races and ethnicities."But the writer neglected to mention that Turner contributed one-panel cartoons to the "Humor in Hue" page in Negro Digest magazine (renamed Black World) in the 1960s and 1970s. Negro Digest was published by the Chicago based Johnson Publishing Company that also published Ebony and Jet magazines. Turner's "Humor in Hue" cartoons always had an anti-racism theme.

For me the most memorable cartoon that he drew was one consisting of ten-panels called "The Invisible Black: A Study in White Color-Blindness" (Black World, June 1970). It depicts a white male and female, who in their travels in different venues, are totally oblivious to the black men and women they encounter performing various job titles: flight attendant, bus driver, firefighter, et cetera. That is, until they happen upon a intoxicated black man with a liquor bottle in his hand, sprawled out in front of an apartment building. "Look, Henry," announces the woman, with obvious disgust, "isn't that typical of them!!!"