THE Africa woman head-wrap (dhuku) holds a distinctive position in the history of African dress both for its longevity and for its potent significations. It endured the travail of colonialism and never passed out of fashion. The dhuku represents far more than a piece of fabric wound around the head. This distinct cloth head covering has been called variously ‘head rag’, ‘head-tie’, ‘head handkerchief’, ‘turban’, or ‘head-wrap’. The head-wrap usually completely covers the hair, being held in place by tying the ends into knots close to the skull. In style, the African-American woman’s head-wrap exhibits the features of sub-Saharan aesthetics and worldview. In the United States, however, the head-wrap acquired a paradox of meaning not customary on the ancestral continent. During slavery, white overlords imposed its wear as a badge of enslavement! Later it evolved into the stereotype that whites held of the ‘Black Nammy’ servant. The enslaved and their descendants, however, have...
