“Till pretty not too long ago, the Black particular person was self-conscious about his curly, kinky hair,” he advised The New York Instances in 1971. “She or he would lay our a fortune making an attempt to take the curl out. That made it straightforward for the army. They might merely run the clippers intently over a Negro’s head — no downside in any respect.”
Over the subsequent few years, Mr. Morrow logged tens of hundreds of miles visiting bases round Asia, Europe and the USA, giving workshops to army and native civilian barbers. He claimed he was the youngest particular person ever to log 1,000,000 miles on Delta Air Traces.
In fact, not everybody needed an Afro, even on the top of the Black Energy period, and so alongside the choose he developed dozens of different hair care merchandise, lots of them straightening and softening remedies that have been gentler than the standard chemical compounds then in use.
By the mid-Seventies he had a product referred to as Tomorrow Curl, which started to take off in 1977 when he modified the identify to California Curl. It gave his prospects’ hair a comfortable and glossy look, and just like the choose, it was straightforward to make use of.
Once more, his timing was excellent. The Afro was waning in recognition, and younger folks have been in search of a brand new fashion. However when Mr. Morrow determined to market his product solely to hair care professionals, different corporations moved in. Jheri Redding, one other California hairdresser, reformulated a product he already had in the marketplace for white hair and offered it on to Black customers.
