Knights of the Razor:

Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom

The barbershop has been an important institution in the African-American community for generations. But what many don’t know is that up until about the Reconstruction Era, pretty much all barbers in the United States — whether they cut the hair of white men or black men — were African-American, and that barbering provided many black men a good enough living to enter the upper middle class.


Today on the show, I talk to historian Douglas Bristol about his book recounting this lost part of American male history. It’s called Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom. Today on the show, Doug and I discuss the rise of the black barber in slaveholding states in the South, the influence black barbers had in the white community, and how black barbers paved the way for the modern barbershop. We also discuss the factors that led to the segregation of the barbershop and why it maintained a stronger allegiance among black men compared to their white counterparts.

Show Highlights

• The low status of the barber profession in the 19th century
• The high status a black slave barber could gain in the white community
• The tensions that existed between black barbers and their white customers
• How one slave barber ended up financially supporting his master
• How freed black slave barbers became some of the wealthiest men in the African-American community
• The political influence many black barbers had in the Republican Party after the Civil War
• How black barbers created the luxury barbershop in the 19th century
• What black leaders like Frederick Douglass thought of successful black barbers
• The apprenticeship process the Knights of the Razors developed to train future black barbers
• How the apprenticeship system helped cement the centrality of the barbershop in the African-American community
• The successful black barbers who started the first insurance companies for African-Americans
• Why white men preferred to get their haircut by black barbers despite the influx of white European barbers in the late 19th century
• How state licensing in the late 19th century helped lead to the segregation of the barbershop
• How the invention of the safety razor contributed to the decline of the barbershop in the late 19th century
• Why the barbershop had a stronger toehold among African-American men than with white men
• And much more!