6+ Ideal Slaves Braided Escape Route Patterns In Their Hairstyles
These cornrow styles are still done today and tourists visiting the small village can have authentic styles recreated by women living in the town.
Slaves braided escape route patterns in their hairstyles. As mentioned earlier Asprilla Garcia also spoke on how hairstyles were a mode of communication within communities with matriarchal figures having a different style of braids a symbol that slipped under slave. A tree a path a field. The source for this data falls back on an Afro-Colombian woman named Ziomara Asprilla Garcia who shares about the ancestral practice of escape routes being braided into hairstyles in her home country of Columbia.
The Afro-Colombian hairstyles have origins from these times of slavery when women would sit to comb their childrens hair after a backbreaking day of labor. What if I told you all during slavery our ancestors braided escape route patterns in their hairstyles too flee bondage and seek freedom from their oppessors. Most times the intricate patterns used to cornrow their hair were used to deliver secret messages.
Cornrows were also a sign of resistance as Emma Dabiri describes in her book Dont Touch My Hair that slaves hid signals and maps in plain sight of the slaveholders in their braided hairstyles. And another style had curved braids tightly braided on their heads. And another style had curved braids tightly braided on their heads.
The curved braids would represent the roads they would use to escape. The Fula women also went to great lengths to present their hair beautifully. The braids were often used to relay messages between slaves signal that they were going to escape or even used to keep gold and seeds to help them survive after they would run away.
Through small bows knots and braiding the women marked the points of the landscape. Cornrows have long been a facet of African beauty and life. The scheme was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees.
And another style had curved braids tightly braided on their heads. How Cornrows Were Used as an Escape Map From Slavery. Some patterns were even utilized to deliver secret messages.