Marcus Garvey is credited with coining the phrase “Black is beautiful.” During the 1920s the Pan Africanist leader adopted the term. Garvey encouraged Black women to embrace their natural hair and features. He said, “Don’t remove kinks from your hair. Remove them from your brain.” He believed that attempting to follow white Eurocentric standards of beauty denigrated the beauty of Black women. The concept of Black being beautiful waned and almost died after Garvey was deported and then with his death.
The Black is Beautiful movement was a powerful cultural and social movement that reemerged during the 1960s and 1970s. The term “Black is Beautiful,” usually evokes memories and/visions that might fill your head full of afros, blaxploitation films, Black empowerment, civil rights movements, and black fists held in the air. In 1962, a photographer, a group of models and a fashion show in Harlem would kick-start a cultural and political movement.
In late January 1962, a group of artists known as the African Jazz-Art Society & Studios staged a fashion show in Harlem that would change American culture forever.
#grandassamodels #naturally62 #blackisbeautiful

SOURCES:
* NEW YORK POST: How A Harlem Fashion Show Started the Black is Beautiful Movement
* MUSEUM OF NEW YORK CITY: Fashion and Consciousness
* BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY: The Fashion Show That Helped Launch a Movement
* BBC: The Birth of the Black Power Movement
* NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND CULTURE: The Emergence of Black Culture and Identity in the 60s and 70s
* CBC: Why Decades Old Black is Beautiful Movement Resonates So Strongly Today