They dressed that way so we wouldn't have to

In the midst of a conversation about urban wear and the effects it has on black youth, a friend and I started talking about black fashion in the 1950s. \nWe had a hard time accepting the proper dress our grandparents and great-grandparents adopted in order to gain civil rights. We also had a problem with older black people still trying to force us to adopt this same style of dress. When talking about civil rights and fashion, the generation gap is mind-boggling. I can tell you the arguments I have had about my hair. Though I don't straighten it, I understand why Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. did not wear afros. \nIn the 1950s, when black people were struggling for their civil rights, many used clothing as a form of nonverbal communication to obtain political, economic and social goals. In a time when A-line skirts and cuffed jeans worn with button down blouses were in, black people took it upon themselves to emulate white culture in every way. Even hair was straightened. \n"No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes," Booker T. Washington said.\nBlack people in America knew the power of dress, and an example of a man using dress politically is Martin Luther King Jr. King was nicknamed "Tweedy" in college because of his stylish dress. He wore suits with hand-rolled monogrammed pocket squares with a standard-model fedora hat. His dashing good looks and sense of taste went well with his education and background, so it is no wonder he was picked to be head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Can you imagine Rosa Parks, a seamstress in the 1950s, refusing to give up her seat wearing an afro and dashiki? The look was not appropriate for the time or situation. When students participated in sit-ins wearing their best clothes, it allowed them to openly defy the system while at the same time communicating a desire to belong. \n"Behind the seams," an article by Robin Givhan in the March 2005 issue of Suede, stated the case beautifully:\n"Fashion was there during all of the lunch counter sit-ins and the March on Washington, when black men and women dressed in their Sunday best to confront the indignities of segregation with grace, pride and solemnity. Style was a kind of armor for the young men and women who first integrated schools and universities. When the quiet students marched past sneering onlookers they were cloaked in traditional all-American style." \nThe traditional clothing of the protestors juxtaposed well-mannered, well-dressed black people with the unjust brutality and ill-mannered behavior of certain white people in the South. \nOn the other hand, once black people obtained their civil rights politically, they had to enforce them socially. I am sure in the 1960s when the Black Panthers stormed white America wearing black turtlenecks, black leather jackets, slim black pants, berets and carrying shotguns, it was a sight for sore black eyes that in previous decades, they had seen their people humiliated on television. The look of the Panthers is still a classic staple among many across the country, and in the black community, a leather jacket worn with a turtleneck is as classic as Jackie Kennedy. My leather jacket is a dark green. \nDonned in dashikis, afros and medallions, being proud and black had probably never felt better, and fashion expressed those exact sentiments. James Brown screamed, "I'm black and I'm proud" in orange bell bottom suits. More clothing choices became available when the Four Tops, the Spinners and the Temptations became popular: Black people no longer needed to make a statement because their style had become mainstream.\nI wonder, were our great-grandparents in awe of our grandparents' and parents' freedom when it came to expressing themselves through clothing? Understanding progress and the importance of fashion today, I can respect the black club women who wore white gloves, hats and church dresses to gain black suffrage; I can respect Malcolm X's suits and bow ties; I can respect Angela Davis' afro. Now when I look at myself in the mirror, and I walk outside in a babydoll dress with ethnic print on the bottom, cuffed jeans, curly puffed-out hair and a pair of Baby Phat door knocker earrings, I realize my style is a direct result of those who came before me. Black club women wore gloves and women in the 1950s straightened their hair so I wouldn't have to.