The history of the African head wrap is rich in tradition, controversy, and cultural significance. From its origins in Sub-Saharan Africa to its modern-day resurgence as a symbol of empowerment and fashion, the head wrap has journeyed through time, carrying stories of identity, resistance, and resilience.
In this article, we delve into the fascinating history of the African head wrap, exploring its evolution, cultural importance, and its role in shaping black beauty and culture.
Definition of Headwraps
The Cambridge Dictionary defines headwraps as: “head covering made from or looking like a piece of cloth wrapped around the head and fashion traditionally worn in many African cultures.”
According to Paula, a head wrap is more than just an accessory; it is rooted in culture and history. Wearing it requires an understanding of its significance, as it enhances one's presence and stature.
A Brief History of Headwraps
Over two hundred years ago, during the early 1700s, head wraps were worn by women in Sub-Saharan Africa to designate their age, marital status, and lineage. The head wrap was also a way to decorate oneself much like an Instagram profile today-a means of displaying one's personal fashion sense. The fabric used in these early head wraps was often rich, elaborate, and patterned with exotic flowers.
Read also: Experience Fad's Fine African Cuisine
Fast forward to Nigeria in the mid-1900s, where head wraps were reserved for special occasions and made from lighter fabrics. The Head Wrap was also used as a sign of respect for elders and royalty. In fact, many African cultures use the head wrap as a symbol of respect: the Ethiopian Queen wore one wrapped around the crown of her head while married women would wear it tied on top of their heads to show their marital status.
In Western culture, the head wrap has become a symbol of empowerment for women. It represents a rejection of modern Eurocentric beauty standards that favor straight hair over natural curly or kinky hair.
The Headwrap as a Symbol
Headwraps are beautiful, but they are more than just a great accessory option. They have a long and rich history, rooted in culture and tradition. The headwrap is such an important part of the African diaspora it's practically inseparable from the people who wear it. That's why anyone who dons one should understand its significance.
The headwrap has become an iconic symbol of black women. Historically, it was worn by slaves in America as a way to maintain their modesty and preserve their identity, despite the dehumanization that came with servitude. It also served as a way for them to communicate messages of love and longing, as well as spirituality.
In West Africa, headwraps have been worn for hundreds of years by both men and women as a symbol of strength and power. During colonization, Europeans tried to ban Africans from wearing the traditional headscarves-they were considered a sign of rebellion and a refusal to assimilate into the Western world.
Read also: The Story Behind Cachapas
Today, the headwrap has evolved into many different styles, shapes, and materials. For example, N'deye Diop-Bovet has created her own take on them: she uses her scarves to reflect her modern African heritage and express herself through artistry and fashion design
Where, when, and how headwraps are styled may represent wealth, ethnicity, marital status, mourning, or reverence. Despite the dispersal of African communities due to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, emancipation, the Great Migration, and globalization, this black hair fashion has stood the test of time and space.
Throughout the antebellum American South, South America, and the Caribbean, many slave masters required enslaved black women to wear head coverings. Headscarves served functional purposes like protecting women’s scalps from the sun, sweat, grime, and lice. They were also symbolic markers, indicating a slave’s inferiority in the social hierarchy of the time period.
In Afro-creole culture, headwrap traditions are a classic example of turning lemons into lemonade despite oppression.
In 1785, Spanish colonial governor Esteban Rodriguez Miró mandated that Afro-Creole women wear tignons, a turban-like headwrap, to undermine their “exotic” allure. Tignon Laws aimed to reaffirm the social order by marking women of color as different. Afro-Creole women protested, decorating their tignons with jewels, ribbons, and feathers.
Read also: Techniques of African Jewellery
After the United States abolished slavery in 1865, some black American women continued to wear headwraps creatively. However, the style ultimately became associated with servitude and homeliness. The mass production of mammy images like Aunt Jemima wearing a checkered hair tie reinforced such stigmas.
To assimilate into the dominant culture, many middle-class and upwardly mobile black women began embracing Eurocentric standards for beauty and professionalism. As a result, wearing headscarves in public largely fell out of favor in early 20th-century black communities.
During the 1970s, headwraps became a central accessory of the Black Power uniform of rebellion. The headwrap, like the Afro, defiantly embraced a style once used to shame people of African descent.
In the 1990s and 2000s, artists like Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and India Arie popularized colorful and towering wraps for a new generation. Just as the neo-soul genre repackaged black music styles like jazz, hip-hop, and R&B, these artists’ head coverings paid tribute to a long, rich history of black hair culture. While the style was new and unfamiliar to many outside the African diaspora, headwraps quickly entered the mainstream.
Today, headwraps are in vogue yet again. As the natural hair movement gains momentum, many women turn to them as a fashionable protective style option. Tucking kinky and curly hair away under fabric reduces the need to manipulate one’s curls, and less manipulation means less hair breakage.
Beautiful and versatile, each headwrap gives someone a chance to express their heritage and their love of African fashion.
The headwrap began as a way of saving time, not being bothered to do my hair in any practical way, but also as a kind of symbol or loyalty with exactly that kind of African ancestry.
Headwraps have become so prevalent that many Black-owned hair brands sell an excess of custom-made ones in various patterns, shapes and sizes.
As black women, women of color, have always struggled on how they can make it appropriate and safe for the society, but with the headwrap, women are really embracing the Africanness within them. Just like the evolution of iconic hairstyles, the headwraps made their way to be a fashion statement and symbol of self love.
Some make the historical link of origins to royalty in ancient Egypt, Nubia and West Africa. Hieroglyphic evidence points to Pharaohs who wore headbands or covered their hair with wigs. The divine crowns for royalty and gods were made of cloth and had specific meaning and significance (1). In other parts of Africa hair wigs were made of natural materials such as beads, feathers and plant fibres from the baobab tree.
A renaissance in African pride has seen many of the head ties worn up north being now worn to signify affluence as well as spirituality in black women. These are generally bigger in size and more elaborate in design than the ones worn down here in the south.
For rural women head wraps are often used as protective clothing to cover hair from dust and dirt while doing chores.
Newly married young women in African culture receive head ties (like the sarong) especially from mother-in-laws to denote respect and an achievement of respectable status.
In Africa in general, and universally in some houses of worship, women (for example ZCC) are often required to wear head ties to cover their heads as a sign of respect and humility.
The headwrap originated in sub-Saharan Africa, and was often used to convey modesty, spirituality and prosperity. Even men in Africa wear head wraps to symbolize wealth and social status. Head wrapping is literally a way that African’s for centuries have been able to non-verbally communicate their place in life. The headwrap of a woman walking down the street will tell you if she’s a widow, a grandmother, or if she’s a married young woman. It’s an element in the daily living of an African woman. Headwraps also serve a practical function in protecting the head from the rays of the sun.
In Ghana, opportunity to wear a duku usually falls on a religious day of Friday, Saturday or Sunday. In Nigeria, the head-ties are known as gele, and can be rather large and elaborate. Although the gele can be worn for day-to-day activities, the elaborate ceremonial ones are worn to weddings, special events, and church activities. It is usually made of a material that is firmer than regular cloth. When worn, especially for more elaborate events, the gele typically covers a woman’s entire hair as well as her ears. The only part exposed is her face and earrings on the lower part of her earlobes.
During slavery, white overlords imposed the wear of headwraps as a badge of enslavement. Later it evolved into the stereotype that whites held of the “Black Mammy” servant. The enslaved and their descendants, however, bravely regarded the headwrap as a helmet of courage that evoked an image of their true homeland - that ancient Africa - or the newer homeland; America.
Headwraps have numerous videos on how to artfully tie them. From dukus to geles to doeks, there’s no shortage of headwraps to choose from.
In 18th century Africa, when Black women started wearing headwraps, they did so to assert their Black womanhood and distinguish themselves from one another.
Regional Names for Headwraps
Headwraps are known by various names across different African regions:
- Yoruba (Nigeria): Geles
- Ghana: Dukus
- South Africa and Namibia: Doek (Afrikaans)
- Zimbabwe: Dhuku
- Botswana: Tukwi
- Nigeria: Angele
The Headwrap Today
In modern times, headwraps have taken on new meanings while still fundamentally serving as an ode to African roots. Some women wear headwraps as a protective headgear while sleeping, as curly and kinky hair tend to turn dry when cotton pillowcases are used. Some women also opt to sport a headwrap on days when they are doing heatless styles.
African women still wear headwraps when attending cultural festivities such as weddings, baby showers and even funerals.
Here's a summary of the evolution and significance of headwraps:
| Period | Significance |
|---|---|
| Early 1700s | Designated age, marital status, and lineage in Sub-Saharan Africa. |
| Mid-1900s | Reserved for special occasions in Nigeria; symbol of respect for elders and royalty. |
| Slavery Era | Symbol of subservience and identity preservation for enslaved women in America. |
| 1970s | Central accessory of the Black Power uniform of rebellion. |
| 1990s-2000s | Popularized by artists like Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill; tribute to black hair culture. |
| Modern Times | Fashionable protective style; ode to African roots; worn at cultural festivities. |
Headwraps are a fun, fashionable way to add instant exoticism to your wardrobe.
Headwraps have a detailed cultural history which reveals that they are much more than mere hair accessories.
Headscarves served functional purposes like protecting women’s scalps from the sun, sweat, grime, and lice.
Traditional Jewish women cover their hair with a tichel or snood. Rastafarians wear turbans over their dreadlocks for protection against the environment, religious purposes and again for respect and humility - as with the Ethiopian Muslim who wears a hijab or khimar.
In Christianity there are no direct divine commands for women to cover their heads, however Bible verses can be found that showed a level of modesty and this practice: Genesis 24:65, Numbers 5:18. In the New Testament can be found more direct guidance as to practices to be followed at Corinthians 11:2-16.
