Jet Black

Jet Black

Black Cowboys and Indians in the Family

Sunny Nash's family is filled with black cowboys and Native Americans on both sides. In her book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, Nash writes about  her great uncles who broke wild horses, punched cattle on a ranch near Iola, Texas, and made moonshine on the Western Frontier.

In the essay, "Private Business" in her book, Nash writes: Bigmama's brother-in-law, George--a jet black gentleman cowboy with one of the few cars in the family (in the 1950s)—waited for Bigmama out front in his shiny black Buick. When he was young, Uncle George broke horses and punched cattle on the Yeager ranch near Iola. He'd retired years before but still lived in a cabin on the ranch, and the Yeagers made sure he had a new car every two years or so. Before I was born, he was married to Bigmama's sister, Lill, until her death. Uncle George never remarried. He got out of the car and opened the trunk for Bigmama's suitcase. His sweet-smelling cologne drifted from the street to my nose. As usual, he wore a crisp white shirt, gray pinstriped suit, cream Stetson hat, and fancy cowboy boots.

"Uncle George was the only person who called Bigmama by her Comanche name," Nash said. "Bigmama avoided association with her Comanche heritage, not because she was shamed of it. She still had certain fears of this association getting the family harmed. These fears were passed to her from her father."

From her book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (book description link), in the essay, "Cousin Hudge, the Traveling Fiddler" Nash writes:

Did your father give you the Indian name that Uncle George calls you?" I asked Bigmama, staring at her for a long time, while she decided not to tell me anything more. How well I knew that look.

"We're going to leave this old talk alone now." She seemed to snap back from somewhere far away. "You don't need to know that old slaverytime prairie business. I didn't teach it to my children, and I'm not telling you. The old way is gone. Knowing about it can't help you in this world."

"But Bigmama."

"Folks are scared of the word, Comanche!"  She scolded. "They hate anybody they believe got one drop of that blood. Safer to be African than Comanche!" I shivered. "Now let it rest."

"That's why you hate it when Uncle George calls you by your other name," I whispered.

Subsiding into aloofness, she seemed to forget I was even there. She wouldn't have been more alone on a mountaintop in the wind. I didn't mind allowing her to escape. I'd found myself doing the same thing when something annoyed or bored me.

Nash, recognized as a leading author in the area of race relations, also publishes widely about the African American West. In the book, The African-American West: A Century of Short Stories (University Press of Colorado), edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Laurie Champion, Nash's short story, Amen, is included.

The African American West: A Century of Short Stories is a collection of short stories by noted African American writers, spanning the Twentieth Century, including W.E.B. DuBois, Rita Dove, Reginald McKnight, Terry McMillan, Ralph Ellison, Sunny Nash, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Walter Mosley, Charles W. Chesnutt, Frank Yerby, Langston Hughes and others.

Excerpt: "The Gun" by Langston Hughes from stories of the 1930s
Picture yourself a lone bird in a cage with monkeys, or the sole cat in a kennel full of dogs. Even if the dogs became accustomed to you, they wouldn't make the best of playmates; nor could you, being a cat, mate with them, being dogs. Although, in the little town of Fall Rock, Montana, the barriers were less natural than artificial (entirely man-made barriers, in fact), nevertheless, to be the only Negro child in this small white city made you a stranger in a strange world; an outcast in the house where you lived; a part of it all by necessity, and yet no part at all...

In her article, The African American West, Sunny Nash talks about many aspects of the American Western Frontier, including civil rights, violence and lynching, and she includes photographs of various acts and eras.

© 2011 Sunny Nash. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

About the Author

Sunny Nash is the author of Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, chosen by the Association of American University Presses as essential for understanding race relations in the United States, listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center in New York and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida. Nash has work in the African American National Biography by Harvard and Oxford; African American West, Century of Short Stories; Reflections in Black, History of Black Photographers 1840 - Present; Ancestry; Companion to Southern Literature; Texas Through Women's Eyes; Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy; African American Foodways; Southwestern American Literature Journal; The Source: guidebook to American genealogy; Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics; Ebony Magazine; Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places; and others. http://sunnynash.blogspot.com/p/about-sunny-nash.html

Should I get red streaks on my jet black hair?

I just recently dyed my hair jet black . In a month or so Im planning to put red streaks in it myself but Im afraid that it may turn to a color that I'd dislike. Should I still go for the red streaks?

I love that look! You will have to bleach the black out of the parts of your hair that you want red though. And if you used a box dye to your hair, the bleach more than likely won't lift (lighten) your hair evenly. You may end up with some pink-orange streaks, and some may turn reddish. Also, red is VERY hard to keep up, it fades very quickly (3-4 washes). If you can't tolerate re-doing your hair often, don't do red.

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