By Brendon James/reporter
The last Black History Month event of the semester held on NE was very nappy — as in nappy hair.
Nappy is a type of hair texture that is tightly curled and mainly seen among African-Americans, said featured speaker Linda “Mosetta” Jones and English instructor Shewanda Riley Feb. 27.
The Nap Dap, a video, featured African-Americans sliding their hands together a few times and then snapping their fingers to find most of the females had nappy hair. The video was shown to give the audience visual images of what nappy hair looks like.
“Women are perceived in different ways depending on the natural hair,” Riley said,
Jones played another song where the audience members greeted each other using the hand-sliding technique shown in The Nap Dap video and greeted other members while the music was playing.
“My purpose is to change the negative thinking about natural hair,” she said.
The video Nappyhead Crusader in South Africa featured Jones in a South African neighborhood talking to people about their natural hair. The South Africans were also doing the hand-slide-and-snap move shown in The Nap Dap video. When a young girl in the video asks Jones if she could make her look pretty, the others around her reassure her that she is already beautiful. A man says her eyes and cheeks were very beautiful.
Another young girl walks up to her and says, “You are already beautiful. Just because you don’t have money does not mean that you are poor. You are breathing, and that is rich enough.”
During the presentation, the children from the TCC Children’s Center sang “Did You Feed My Cow?” The song was written by Ella Jenkins, an American folk singer known as “The First Lady of the Children’s Folk Song.”
