An Interview with Dr. JoAnne Cornwell, Creator of Sisterlocks and Professor Emerita of Africana Studies and French at San Diego State University
An overview of the life of Dr. JoAnne Cornwell, creator of Sisterlocks, and Professor Emerita of Africana Studies and French at San Diego State University
A Profile of Dr. JoAnne Cornwell: Professor, Creator, Innovator
Interview conducted, edited and published by Aileen Ruiz, 08/15/21
Where were you born and how do you believe it influenced your path in life?
I was born in Detroit Michigan, at a time when being a working class African-American family came with its challenges, but also strong values. I think that my birthplace and my family context prepared me very well for going out into the world and trying my hand at whatever I decided I wanted to do. My parents were not highly educated, but they were very astute, street smart and strong, intelligent people; they passed on a capacity to look at things squarely and exercise good judgement and that took me a long way. My father returned to school after age 40, got an accounting degree and became the first African-American accountant for the city of Detroit. He was relentless in terms of exploring his own potential, even when life dropped a family in his lap. There were decades in which he could neither afford nor justify going to school, but he never let go of that dream and made it a reality in his life. I think I come from good stock, which doesn’t mean that life has not thrown challenges my way, it’s just a self-concept that allows you to tell yourself that you’re up to the challenge. I probably have as many failures as I’ve got successes on my record but what some people would call failures, I would look at as training grounds for the next challenge.
When I was a young college aged person, in the late 60’’s, because I got good grades in high school--and that was very deliberate, I knew that if you got good grades you had a potential for getting a scholarship to college; I worked really hard in high school and did get a scholarship to college but this was during the time when affirmative action was just beginning. Because of this, I was able to apply to colleges that never would have looked at an application from somebody like me. For my generation, when you applied to college you had to include a picture on your application because they wanted to know what you looked like, and if you looked like a Black person you could forget your chances at many colleges. They wouldn’t say that, but it was well known. Consequently, affirmative action changed the reward system for universities and colleges so if they stressed diversity more, and gave opportunities to people other than white males and white people in general, then there was an incentive for them to consider people of color, more women etc. I was able to apply to more places and get serious consideration from these places, however, the policies changed but very often attitudes had not changed. When I showed up with my bags at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana; I sat for over three hours in the waiting room because nobody would talk to me. They were sure that because I was a Black kid I must be in the wrong place. They weren’t going to make it easy for me to matriculate through the process and get established as a student. When they saw that they had assigned me to a room with a white student, they couldn’t get their minds around that. So here I am, not even able to start my education because there were racist attitudes and policies that were still getting in the way of me simply putting my bags down in my room and getting a good night’s sleep so that I could start class the next day.
Growing up, you must have seen videos of the 50’s Civil Rights protests, how did witnessing these protests make you feel?
I was terrified. I was just a little kid seeing people like me, roughly my age and younger who were getting spit on and pushed around. I couldn’t imagine myself having that much courage and it was mesmerizing, but it was also terrifying. I was so grateful that there were people in the world who had the strength to do what those people were doing. I knew I was living through a period in our nation’s history that was transformational because these people were not going to stop, and thank goodness they didn’t stop because here we are now. These people were putting their bodies on the line day after day and they were not going to stop until this nation changed.
Growing up in Detroit, there was no official segregation, but when we were children it was very clear what movie theater we could go to if we didn’t want to get into a fight with white kids because they didn’t want us there and the adults were on their side, not ours.
When did your passion for natural hair begin?
A couple of decades after the 60’s Black power movement, natural hair was no longer being pushed as a badge of honor for the Black power movement or something that you had to wear to prove that you were down with the people. The sentiment had faded and people who were wearing natural hair were more culturally focused on our African past, our African braiding traditions and how those traditions extended themselves whether it was through natural hair braiding or braiding with extensions as part of our cultural tradition. There started to be a lot more creativity with braids and you started to see locs, not very much in the 80’s, but you did start to see salons that did natural hair and that’s what turned things around for me. I’m an African descended woman, and I really have a deep love and appreciation for our African roots and our diaspora culture. And so where does my hair fit into that self-concept? So I started looking at my hair and experimenting with my hair. Coming up with a way that allowed me to have everything I ever wanted In terms of my hair without altering my natural texture, and understanding and giving my locs what they want.
Historically, what purpose did assimilating natural Black hair to white beauty standards serve?
There is a stigma on our hair type that goes way back. The incentive to make your hair not like Black peoples’ hair was really strong, it’s still strong today. People run away from our natural characteristics and it’s not a coincidence. Historically there were places that had bandana laws so that you couldn’t show your hair, you had to wear a bandana. So if you showed your hair, you wanted it to look as much like Caucasian type hair as possible. This kept you safer, you weren’t going to get spit on or ridiculed, or you’d get the job. That type of thinking carried over into the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. You wouldn’t think about going on a job interview with your natural hair, that was the norm, not the exception. Even when we came through the phase of braided extensions, they were too “ethnic,” you had to straighten your hair so it looked like white peoples’ hair; that is the safest route to being able to put food on your table. So the fact that African-American people, women primarily, have ended up with this kind of relationship to our natural hair is not because there’s something wrong with us, it’s because it’s been part of a survival strategy, that has worked. If it hadn’t worked, it wouldn’t be so deeply engrained, and it wouldn’t have lasted so long.
How did you begin to create what Sisterlocks is today?
I couldn’t believe that a whole race of people was given a hair type and there was something wrong with it. So I started questioning, “What is wrong with it?” I don’t believe my hair is a curse, so what is going on here? Why do I have to straighten my hair in order for it to be acceptable? The logical way to the answer is to ask, “What does the hair naturally like to do?” The answer is, it likes to loc. It will loc if you don’t do anything else to it. Our hair naturally loves to loc. Given that, and the fact that I love to style my hair, I asked, “How can you make locs that are stylable?” That is what got me experimenting with what the hair likes to do. I’ve been around beauty salons, my mother had a salon, my grandmother had a salon. I’ve been doing my own hair since I was a kid. I was the one everybody came to in college, so I had lots of hands on experience with different techniques. I wasn’t afraid to experiment. I knew that I wanted locs, but I didn’t want traditional locs that were large and not stylable. I knew I had to figure out how to make tiny locs. It took me a couple of years to work out the technique. When I worked it out, I worked it out on my hair without realizing that I had ideal locking type hair. My own sister had a different hair type and what I figured out on myself didn’t work as well on her so I had to come up with variations based on the different hair characteristics. That’s what led little by little to the Sisterlocks system. It took mastering this technique for creating tiny stylable locs in our hair type, and then expanding it and modifying the technique so a broad range of hair types would respond positively to this system.
Throughout your career, who was your support system?
My family, we sat around the kitchen table in the beginning and decided how to move forward. None of us had any business experience but we had each other. We were willing to work for no money for years, and understood the bigger picture was what we were after. Specifically, I would say my two sisters, we say that among the three of us, we make one hell of a woman because I’ve researched things, and each of my sisters does the same. Together we’ve made the big decisions for the business over the years and I know that they’re always there for me and I’m always going to be there for them. I attribute our relationship to my mother’s approach to mothering because she really instilled in us that we had a world to fight and that we were not going to be fighting each other, we were always going to be on the same team.
Can you speak about the effect of white hair standards when it comes to educating cosmetology students?
The cosmetology industry was based on racial exclusion and that’s because it is not cosmetology of everybody’s hair, it’s the cosmetology of Caucasian type hair. They make everybody, no matter what kind of hair type they have, what kind of hair they will be practicing on, learn the cosmetology of Caucasian type hair and call it universal. The whole foundation of the cosmetology industry is based on a racialist notion of hair. Most people who go through cosmetology school are not aware of this, they don’t necessarily consciously realize that normalizing Caucasian type hair means that everything else that is not Caucasian hair is not normal and needs to try to mimic Caucasian type hair. That supports this tendency among African-American people and people with African type hair, that we are going to do anything and everything to try to get toward the norm, which is Caucasian type hair.
Your company, Sisterlocks was involved in a federal court case in the late 90’s, could you please explain what changes you were fighting for?
The court case itself tested whether or not there was a rational basis for the requirement of the cosmetology industry for people who perform natural hair, African type hair, including braiding, locking, and twisting. The court case determined that there was no rational basis for this because the cosmetology industry did not teach or test for anything that had to do with natural African textured hair. It is on the basis of that argument that we won the court case. You can’t require that somebody who is going to do locs has to learn how to do pin curls and flips and things that straight hair can do.
As a professor of Africana studies, how do you empower your students?
When you’re okay about who you are and you’re not trying to be anybody else, you’re not running after someone else’s culture. Once you’re centered and in love with yourself and in love with your culture, then you’re okay. You come to the table with everything that you need. You have to acquire knowledge and you might not be at the pinnacle just because you know who you are culturally, but you don’t experience life according to any kind of a deficit model. For me, that is truly a prerequisite for leveling a playing field, it is not just the external conditions that society can offer you or keep from you. No matter what room I walk into, I know I’m okay with who I am. I know so much about myself and my personal history and family that it provides me with a capacity to deal with whatever I’m going to deal with. You don’t have to feel inferior or less than others. You have got just as much in terms of human potential as everybody else. You succeed or fail based on a lot of complex things that you can’t always foresee, but I’m not asking permission for anything, that’s not the life I live.
If you could share a message with the world, what would it be?
You’re going to work really hard in this life, so you might as well do something that you love, and that gives your life meaning.
For more information on Sisterlocks, please visit:
https://www.sisterlocks.com/
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