Posted on 03/12/2009 10:25:01 PM PDT by thecodont
Movies have been made and treatises have been written on the role of barbershops in African American life. In the pre-Civil Rights era, they were one of the first businesses that black men, especially in the South, could own, and, outside of churches, one of the few places they could gather.
In recent years, the barbershop has continued to be a place of fellowship, where African American men meet, gossip and dissect sports and politics across generational and socioeconomic lines.
Now barbershops across South Los Angeles have been targeted as the site of lifesaving efforts, thanks to Dr. Bill Releford and a squadron of other volunteers.
Releford, a podiatrist with a Miracle Mile-based private practice, was getting a bald fade at Inglewood's Finest Barbershop one Sunday, when the solution to a long-pondered dilemma came to him: African Americans have the highest rates of diabetes and heart disease of any group, yet black men are among the least likely to see a doctor regularly. So if the men wouldn't come to a doctor, he would bring a cadre of volunteer doctors and nurses to the barbershop.
The Black Barbershop Health Outreach Program was born that day in Inglewood in December 2007. The response was so enthusiastic that Releford expanded the program to 50 other L.A. barbershops, and then to barbershops in other states. This year, at 750 shops in 50 cities across 13 states, men who ordinarily would go nowhere near a doctor's office will be offered a health checkup in a setting so familiar that it will seem as routine as a haircut.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I didn’t know this was unique to blacks. There were always men hanging out in any barber shop I can recall being around. They could solve all the worlds problems in less than an hour and were the best coaches in any sport.
They even knew all about me, yet didn’t even know I was in the shop. “That boy’s got an arm...............he’s a good un’ but he can’t run the option”. I don’t recall ever trying to run option, but who was I to argue with the erudite Barber Shop Think Tank.
The barber pole was associated with early ‘doctoring’. I believe it is also incorporated with the current symbol of same.
I don’t believe that it was singularly ‘black’ oriented though.
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