A hairstylist in Atlanta has transformed a long-standing beauty shop once owned by Madam C.J. Walker into its own semblance of history. The establishment will now become a Black history museum in the same neighborhood as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s childhood home.
The shop’s current owner, Atlanta stylist Ricci De Forest, found the historical gem three decades ago, buying out the space in the hopes of keeping its legacy intact. While gaining ownership of the beauty shop took nearly 20 years, he gained not only Walker’s domain, but the hair tools that made her a household name. As reported by Atlanta News First, the hair stylists who worked there throughout the decades lived through many periods of the nation and city’s history, noted through the changes in costs for typical styles.
“When she started doing hair here in the 1940s with these tools, a shampoo and press was 25 cents for a Negro woman,” shared de Forest about one of the shop’s oldest stylists.
Read the source article at Black Enterprise
