Bullock, Walston, Anjorin 1

Leah, Tajah, Adeola

Professor Raymond

URWT 1104

20 February 2017

Final Proposal

In the mid 1900 after the civil rights act of 1965 opportunities began to open for the black

communities such as jobs and schooling. Although many store owners and managers, and

schools were skeptical, they began to allow blacks to play a role in schools and the work force.

With these changing opportunities, came a change in the sacrifices black women had to make.

Women of color were forced to take on the typical "American appearance," which were styles

approved by the white community. These actions included Perming of hair, and the assimilation

to how whites dressed during this time period. If they didnt appear like this then they would not

be able to have a job white people back, then did not want women with color working with big

hair such as afros with them.

Approximately 50 years later, we are seeing a recurrence of the black or African

American styles and tradition that their community was forced to abandoned. Practices of natural

hair and clothing are emerging once again. However, there seems to be a catch. The things that

were once "unprofessional" have been adopted as a trend in other communities. Most of the

African American women now have natural hair, perm hair is not really a trend anymore so it

slowly reversed as the time went on. This idea of traditions being adopted by other communities
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that chastised the same community for that reason is known as cultural appropriation. Since most

of our project is based on history, we will be using technologies such as the internet and the

library to understand the history of where we came from as well as research the issues that are

still prominent today. The types of modes we will be using in our project include linguistic, aural

and visual. Our project plan is to bring light to the Afrocentric movement and why it is important

then as it is now. Along with the reason why the black community today has gone back to its

roots.

By definition Afrocentrism (also Afrocentricity) is a cultural ideology or worldview

mostly limited to the United States that focuses on the history of African Americans. For the past

10 years, the African-American community has begun to take a stand for their rights with protest,

unnecessary violence, messages and small movement throughout their communities to be heard.

They've seen pain inflicted on their fellow communities and no longer desire to be silent with the

way were supposed to present ourselves. The purpose of this project is to give "outsiders an

inside perspective." Admittedly, it's quite difficult to look at thing from different perspectives,

however we believe that our project can bring clarity to what it means to be Afrocentric.

Being that the Afrocentric movement is so broad, we decided to focus on five major

areas. Fashion from dresses to pants, black lives matter, natural hair and its significance, and

music. Each member of the group will tackle a specific topic and go in depth to eliminate any

preconceived notions that come with such topics. We as African-American women simply wish

to inform others who dont understand. In doing this project we hope to enlightening people on

what they think they know and what is the truth. To make this all happen we plan to meet up

every Sunday evening to discuss the topics we research and pick out what important want we
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plan to place in our presentation. For the group project each of us focus on different themes.

Leah will focus on natural hair, Tajah will research music and Addie will focus on Clothing.

Each of us will go in depth on some of the controversies that present themselves in the following

themes. In our demonstration, we plan on dressing like the black women did during this time

period but also examples of what whites preferred us to look like. This demonstration will be a

part of our visual mode. We will describe the music and give examples, explain the Black Lives

Matter (BLM), and clear up any stereotypes.

In conclusion, in this message we wish to portray that regardless of how far African-

Americans have come since the civil rights movement, there is still work to be done. People still

believe that have big natural hair is not the style and is not a professional appearance. I truly

believe that we, as a country, could do better at understanding the purpose of black women or

any women at that having natural hair, its a part of our culture and that is the way we embrace it,

Not with just our hair but our clothes, and music. "The problem with today's generation is that

we listen to reply instead of understand." Once we establish the truth about the state of minorities

in this country then we can move forward.