AFRICAN WOMEN AND HEADWRAPS

Patsy Liverpool © Saturday October 20, 2018

AFRICAN WOMEN AND HEADWRAPS

 

The headwrap or gele/ichafu (Nigeria,) duku (Malawi, Ghana,) dhuku (Zimbabwe,) tukwi (Botswana,) chitambala (Zambia) has been worn by African women for centuries. In some African cultures the headwrap of a woman has meaning depending on how it is tied. A headwrap can identify a woman as single, a married woman, a widow or a grandmother. In some cases the headwraps are improvised and may have no traditional meaning attached to them except that the wearer is expressing pride in their African culture. Most African women in the Diaspora wear headwraps to express awareness and pride in their Africanness. Many of the cultural meanings were lost, forcibly and brutally stripped from Africans in the Diaspora during slavery.

In one of the more famous cases of how the headwrap lost its African meaning during slavery and gained a new meaning in a slave society was the passing of the “Tignon Law.” In 1785-1786 during the Spanish colonization of Louisiana the “Tignon Law” was passed by Governor Esteban Rodriguez Miró. The “Tignon Law” compelled enslaved African women and those who were free to wear a “tignon” or headwrap whenever they appeared in public. The law was made so that White looking enslaved women and “free women of colour” could be distinguished from White women at a glance by what they wore on their heads. The infamous “one drop” rule was (and still is to some extent) very much a part of the history of African enslavement. Some of the enslaved women throughout North America looked White enough to “pass for White” and were indistinguishable from White women except for the fact that it could be proven that some of their ancestors had been enslaved Africans.

In the culture of Louisiana there was a unique system which led to the passing of the “Tignon Law.” This unique system of Louisiana was the plaçage system where a White man would buy an enslaved African woman and keep her solely for a sexual “relationship.” The women were bought at “Quadroon Balls” or “Octoroon Balls” given especially so that White men could choose to buy a light skin (almost White) enslaved woman. The women were known as “placées” in this unique plaçage system. The children who were born of these “relationships” were also enslaved and were the property of their fathers and the girls would frequently be sold by their White owners/fathers at these "Quadroon Balls" or "Octoroon Balls."

There were various terms used to identify the children depending on the amount of “African blood” in their “pedigree.” Mulatto 1/2, Quadroon ¼ and Octoroon 1/8 were popular terms but then there were those with 1/16 and 1/32 amount of “African blood” who were White in appearance and except for the fact that they were connected to an enslaved African ancestor were White.

It was practically impossible to just look at a woman classed as an “Octoroon” and know that she was not White except if she was wearing a tignon. Historian Virginia M. Gould notes that Miró hoped the law would control women “who had become too light skinned or who dressed too elegantly, or who, in reality, competed too freely with white women for status and thus threatened the social order.”

To the surprise and chagrin of Governor Miro and White Louisiana, the women who were compelled to wear the tignon embraced the tignon and made it fashionable. The tignon was proudly worn, fashionably and intricately tied. Brightly coloured fabrics were used and the tignons were decorated with jewelry, feathers, ribbons etc., What was supposed to be a badge of shame and inferiority became a fashion statement. With the transfer of New Orleans to US control in 1803 following the Louisiana Purchase the "Tignon Law" no longer applied. Yet, according to African American historian Lisa Ze Winters (in the 2016 published book “The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic") the women who had been compelled by law to wear the tignon continued to voluntarily wear it. They had claimed it and made it their own.

In Suriname, a country in South America once colonized by the Dutch, enslaved African women also wore headwraps and gave it their own unique twist. The "angisa" worn by African Surinamese women can be tied to send various messages including the very popular style "let them talk."

Patsy Liverpool © Saturday October 20, 2018