Beauty Shop and Police Brutality Left Panel Detail

Title

Creator

unknown | signed Samabe Shabaks

Description

This scene features imagery associated with Civil Rights era Black radicalism. On the left side, a half-naked woman stands with her eyes closed and a halo radiating from her head. Towards the middle, prominent Black Panther Party leaders are posed in a line. Pictured from left to right are an unknown woman, Bobby Seale, Kathleen Cleaver, Huey P. Newton, and (above the beauty shop) Eldridge Cleaver. In the lower right corner, Black women with natural hair walk purposefully towards Medusa’s Beauty Shop, where women inside are having blonde wigs installed. Several skulls line the walkway towards the shop, where three white women's/mannequin’s heads sit in the doorway. Above them, Cleaver holds an eraser towards the shop. This seems to suggest that the artist is trying to combat Eurocentric, white supremacist beauty standards with pro-Black, pro-natural hair messaging. On the other hand, beauty shops were often key organizing spaces for Black women during the Civil Rights era.

Inscription

Medusa's Beauty Shop

By The Mind One Is Made Slave By The Mind One Is Set Free

Subject

1900-1999

Beauty shops in art

Black art

Black Feminism

Black nationalism

Black Panther Party (BPP)

Political organizations

Social life and customs

Womanism

Women's organizations

Additional Techniques

Mural painting

Format

JPEG

HCAC Identifier

HCAC.TSU.0274.001

Rights

All rights held by the University Museum at Texas Southern. For permission to publish, distribute, or use this image for any other purpose, please contact University Museum, Texas Southern University umuseum@gmail.com Attn: Museum Director. Materials not created by Texas Southern University may still be under copyright. Additional materials may be presented for educational and research purposes in accordance with fair use under United States copyright law.

Main Image

Beauty Shop and Police Brutality

References

"Bobby Seale." PBS. https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/people/people_seale.html.

"Kathleen Cleaver (May 13, 1945)." National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/kathleen-cleaver.

"Biography." PBS. https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/huey/huey_bio.html.

"Eldridge Cleaver." PBS. https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/people/people_cleaver.html.

"Black-Owned Beauty Shops Groom Political Activism." National Public Radio. 28 December, 2011. https://www.npr.org/2011/12/28/144381812/black-owned-beauty-shops-groom-political-activism.