Life's Ponderings: The Comfort of Our Hats
- Christine "Liz" LaRue
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Our New Year often causes one to reflect on those no longer with us - the ones who gave us comfort and care in our younger years. My thoughts often reflect on my grandmother, who was born and raised in bayou country in Louisiana. She became engaged and married through an outreach campaign that advertised marriage to young Black women in church bulletins. She married another Louisiana man who lived in Idaho, where they raised a large family. This boiled down to her relationship with me, a young urban Black child sent on summer break to spend time with this quaint grandma, who took me on Sundays to the only Black church built by Black people in Pocatello, Idaho, a state known as a train hub for locomotive repair.
All that history boiled down to an irritating habit between Grandma and me as we walked to church every Sunday. She insisted I wear a headscarf.
I hated headscarves.
I would walk a few feet ahead and take off the scarf. At a corner, Grandma would pause, take the scarf from me, and without saying a word, put the headscarf back on me, and we would keep walking. So it went. We would repeat this easily 4 or 5 times on our walk to church. This quiet little battle would go on with no words passing between us. Her verve would always win. By the time of our arrival at the church's big wooden doors, the headscarf would be firmly on top of my head until we left the church, and the battle would renew itself until we got back to Grandma's quaint home across the street from the train yard.
Decades later, I was reading about New Orleans history in Ned Sublette's book "The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square" and came across a historical tidbit that shocked me: Grandma's headscarf battle!
In 1786, the Governor of Louisiana Esteban Rodriguez Miró made a law that required African American women be they free or enslaved were ordered by law to wear headscarves. The primary motivation behind the Tignon laws was social control. The decree was part of a larger set of regulations known as the Bando de Buen Gobierno (Proclamation of Good Government).
Apparently, there were enough free women of color in New Orleans society who were gaining significant economic independence and social status. Their elaborate, beautiful hairstyles—often adorned with jewels, ribbons, feathers, and braids—made them stand out and, in many cases, made them difficult to distinguish from upper-class white women.
Governor Miró began to receive a lot of pressure from White Society: White women in the colony felt threatened by the beauty and "luxurious" dress of Black women, as well as the attention these women received from white men. They pressured Governor Miró to intervene.
So Governor Miró sought to enforce the inferiority of Black women: The law mandated that all women of African descent, whether free or enslaved, cover their hair with a tignon (a headwrap or kerchief). The goal was to visually link free Black women to the "slave class" and signal their subordinate status in society.
But this law backfired in a big way. The Governor did not count on the history of African-descended women, who drew on their long cultural heritage. Miró’s attempt to enforce a "badge of slavery" backfired because he was essentially trying to banish Black women into their own ancestral strength. Miró likely didn't realize that in West African cultures (such as the Yoruba, where the Gele originates), headwraps were never merely "rags."
They were crowns.
They communicated a woman’s wealth, marital status, and spiritual connection. By forcing them to wrap their hair, he inadvertently gave them a canvas to display their heritage.
●Fabric was a language: The women used high-end Madras cloth, silks, and vibrant colors.
●Wrapping was an art: They used the same intricate folding techniques used by their mothers and grandmothers in Africa and the Caribbean.
●Defiance was the accessory: Since they couldn't wear their hair out, they tucked the same jewels, feathers, and ribbons they were banned from wearing into the folds of the tignon.
The Governor inadvertently made the "Slave Class" regal!
The ultimate irony was that by trying to link free Black women to the enslaved class (who often wore simple wraps for field work), Miró actually unified the two groups in a shared cultural aesthetic. The tignon became a "uniform of rebellion." Instead of making free women look "enslaved," the artistry of the wraps made the concept of "enslavement" look regal and sophisticated, which was the exact opposite of what the Spanish crown wanted.
By 1803, when the U.S. took over, and the law was no longer enforced, many women refused to remove their tignons. It had transitioned from a legal requirement into a badge of pride and identity, a symbol of New Orleans culture today.
It's a classic example of how oppressive laws can't account for the depth of a people's culture. He thought he was taking away their beauty, but he just gave them a new way to showcase it.
As I read this history, my quiet defiant tussle with Grandma over that headscarf took on a deeper meaning, now that I understood the history she grew up with in Louisiana. This is what makes history so fascinating, as it explains the whys and wherefores of what happens in our lives today. I still don't wear headscarves, though I have learned various ways of headwrapping. What Black woman hasn't experimented with this in some way, even if quietly in her bathroom mirror?
I have leaned into the Black woman's penchant for hats. No, not the frou-frou church hats, but the chapeau of artistic distinction. One of my favorite hats is a gray Stingy-brim hat, a style made famous among Black Cubans. I am on the lookout, or I might design a piece of silver jewelry to attach to my hat, carrying on a distinctive New Orleans tradition of spicing up one's chapeau.
So this New Year, I said a silent prayer to my Grandmother, apologizing for my child-centered obtuseness as she tried to teach me a New Orleans tradition: that a well-dressed Black woman's attire is not complete without her chosen crown!
My comfort lies in understanding where I stand within the grounded history of my people, from Congo Square to Cuba to the shores of Africa. Black women's bodies have notoriously been controlled by European white supremacy, and we Black ladies know how to turn that control on its ear by our defiance and our creativity - even down to how we wear our hats!
Artist Bio
Christine “Liz” LaRue is a clay artist and illustrationist. She is known for her intricately textured figurative sculptures and emotionally illustrative drawings. Chicago-born, though also raised in Utah and Idaho, Ms. LaRue is of Creole/Cuban descent. Her art has been influenced by her Afro-Latino heritage. Ms. LaRue’s interests have centered on pre-Columbian art, including the Olmec, the Maya of Mexico, the Nazca, and the Moche face pots of Peru. This also includes the bronze sculptures of the Ife of Nigeria and Tā Moko tattoo art of the Maōri.
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