Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom

I am researching my great-great-great grandfather who was a free person of color and a barber in North Carolina. I just finished reading this book last night and found it loaded with facts and perspectives that have helped me focus more clearly on my ancestor and his descendants. Combined with reading John Hope Franklin's "Free Negro," (and other resources), I now have a more solid foundation to move forward on my book about these paternal ancestors.

Douglas Bristol has written a stylish volume on a subject too long denied a chair at the panel for black history month: the important role of the black barber in American history, especially in the antebellum period. Another Douglas - Douglas Bushman - wrote tellingly of the transformation in American society through the movement of refinement. Doug Bristol shows how the black barber or Knight of the Razor brought a particular "edge" to the general movement of refinement. Of course this progress of black barbers was earned by a trade-off with racialist views of white clients. Professor Bristol is alert to this difficulty but it does not in any way blunt his celebratory treatment of the black barber.His book is suffused with the names and background of individual barbers, slaves and freedmen. From a personal point of view, I was gladdened to see the story of Pierre Toussaint told in full detail. Toussaint of course was much more than a hairdresser, yet his relationship with his white clients took rise from his craft. Eliza Hamilton Schuyler, granddaughter of the Secretary of the Treasury referred to his "humble calling" after she attended the Toussaint funeral, a standing room only Mass at Old St. Peter's on Barclay St. Yet in Toussaint's will, he speaks of "his friends, the Schuyler family" with perfect amicability. Gone are any seams that might suggest class division or separation by race. If he had a humble calling, it hardly prevented him from forming a bond, eminently personal with New York's Knickerbocracy.Professor Bristol's polished account serves as a corrective to those works on black history which have demanded that only a "protest-lion" was worth considering. While Knights of the Razor does not underrate those blacks who stood up for principle in a confrontational stance, the book declares on behalf of the black barber whose achievements are underscored. These ought you to have done, and left the others not undone.

Dr. Bristols book on black barbers in America is well written. The author gets to the point and stays there. I would recommend it to anyone who would like to know more on a

Bristol's is right on the money in focusing on one of the areas that is missing in historical discussions on African American history!

This tells of a history I knew nothing about...wonderful!

I desperately wanted to enjoy this book. This book is clearly written by an academic for academics. It is exhaustively researched and certainly fascinating, and if you were interested in the history of barbering as it relates to race relations in the US, then this is the book for you. But the writing style is more for academics than for laymen.

The book begins by recounting my 5th great grandfather's (Caesar Hope) life. That works for me....

Well written and delivered ahead of expectation.