The Black Barber Shop with Quincy Mills
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's History Story: Black Barber Shops
The Black barbershop is a cultural institution. It's a place where you can get much more than a haircut. You get community. You get jokes. You might get politicized. And you will get the straight talk that we often hold back when navigating a larger public that's committed to white supremacist systems. What we don't often talk about when thinking of the barbershop is it's vital role in the Black economy.
To help us understand both the politics and economics of Black barber shops, we’re sitting down with Quincy Mills. Quincy is an associate professor of history at the University of Maine and College Park. He teaches courses in 20th century African-American history, particularly business and political history. He's authored, "Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America,” and is working on a new book called “The Wages of Resistance: Financing the Black Freedom Movement."
BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people! PushBlack exists because we saw we had to take this into our own hands.
You make PushBlack happen with your contributions at BlackHistoryYear.com. Most people do 5 or 10 bucks a month, but everything makes a difference. Thanks for supporting the work.
The Black History Year production team includes: Tareq Alani, Brooke Brown, Shiavon Chapman, Abeni Jones, Briona Lamback, Zain Murdock, Tasha Taylor, and Leslie Taylor-Grover. Our producers are Cydney Smith and Sasha Kai Parker, who also edits the show. Black History Year’s executive producer is Julian Walker.
NOTE: Today's history story is a fictional account of what so many Black barbershops experienced historically
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The lights are off. Everything is quiet. You're ready to sleep. |
| 0:05.0 | But your brain isn't. It's going a mile a minute, stressing about every detail of your life. |
| 0:11.0 | Like that awkward thing you said when you were 13, or whether you chose the right career. |
| 0:16.0 | Or that unanswered text you sent earlier. Sound familiar? |
| 0:20.0 | Whether they strike before bed or anytime throughout the day. Racing thoughts are a pain. |
| 0:25.0 | Therapy can give you a place to work through all those thoughts and come up with solutions. |
| 0:30.0 | So they don't keep you up at night or stop you from enjoying the rest of your day. |
| 0:34.0 | With better help, just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist based on your needs and preferences. |
| 0:40.0 | Connect by phone, video or chat from wherever you are. |
| 0:44.0 | Switch therapists any time and use flexible week to week scheduling to book appointments. |
| 0:49.0 | Get a break from your racing thoughts with better help. |
| 0:52.0 | Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. |
| 0:57.0 | That's better help HLP dot com. |
| 1:01.0 | What's interesting for me about barbers and barbershops thinking about this quest. |
| 1:07.0 | The liberation is that, you know, these were everyday folk, right? |
| 1:12.0 | To picked up a razor and tried to find a sense of economic autonomy. |
| 1:18.0 | But it's also the nature of the barbershop, a place where black men and women for sure could come outside of the surveillance of a larger white public to gain some larger political education. |
| 1:33.0 | The barbershop is where you go when you want to get a clean fade or just shoot the breeze. |
| 1:53.0 | You can go there for a good debate or to freely express yourself in a world built to cut away your freedom. |
| 2:02.0 | I'm Jay from push black and you're listening to black history year. |
| 2:08.0 | When you step into a black barbershop, it's often like stepping into a safe space. |
| 2:15.0 | Physically, emotionally and especially politically, men and women can step into this cultural institution to do all manner of things that are specific to the black community. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PushBlack, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of PushBlack and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.