Still on a high from President Barrack Obama speech at Howard University for thier 2016 graduation ceremony this past weekend, my sister and I began to reflect on the image of black professionalism and black excellence for blacks in America.
The image of a black man being the 44th President of the United States is something that many Blacks in America never thought we would see. A sight we only dreamt of at one point because the narrative was basically unknown, before President Obama. But now this same image is no longer a dream but reality for several inspired African Americans graduating with their degrees entering into the workforce. To many people the image of a Black President in the United States is just as rare as seeing positive images of black girls graduating, especially images of young black women graduating while rocking their natural curls.
During a recent graduation photo shoot, we had the pleasure of shooting for a friend of ours. During the shoot we began to explore the lack of images of Black Women Graduating with Afro’s on social media.
Now this could be because the graduation cap was not designed with the offspring of a black man in mind. We personally don’t think the graduation cap was intended for the black girl to ever wear because for a long time education was denied for several blacks in America. Not to mention my sister had such a terrible time trying to graduate while rocking her afro, her graduation cap kept falling off during the ceremony.
After doing research, our original thoughts on the matter was confirmed. My sister and I found that the graduation cap is also known as the mortarboard. It was used during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to identify humanists, students, artists, and learned and blooming youth in general. During this time in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Africans or people from the diaspora were not seen to the world as scholars to the inventors of the mortarboard. Or maybe the motarboard was never intended for women to wear, not matter what race or ethnicity because as women we tend to have different hair styles that may not necessarily conform to the design of the cap. Im sure you or someone you know know has dealt with this durning their graduation.
The first introduction of the mortarboard to the United States was most commonly found to be filed by inventor Edward O’Reilly and Catholic priest Joseph Durham who filed their patent in 1950. We assume that when O’Reily and Durham were inventing the shape of the graduation caps, they did not have African American’s in mind. The Civil Rights Moment didn’t even get national attention in America until 1954 and blacks didn’t even get gain the right to vote until 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed The Voting Rights Act.
Fast forward to today, we are now in 2016 where the first black President is speaking at Howard University and our dear friend Ravon, is graduating from an Ivey league PWI with her masters. Times have really changed, and we wanted to shine light on our photo shoot with Ravon to reflect our new narrative in Our America.
We are no longer just the children of sharecroppers, we are just as educated and qualified to succeed in our natural state of blackness, natural hair and All. Higher learning is now an option for us as a people and we no longer need to assimilate in order to have access to such opportunities. In todays society natural hair should now be seen as professional, and walking across the stage to receive your degree with an afro should be historical, especially because the cap was not designed to fit our hair.
An Afro in America has always symbolized a beacon of hope, strength, resistance but now we want it help propel that narrative forward by being seen as symbol of professionalism and black excellence.
Ravon’s graduation shoot reminded us that an image of a Black woman graduating with an Afro is revolutionary. The rareness of the image is reflection of the current movement and hashtag #BlackGirlsGraduateToo & #BlackGirlMagic
I think there is a lot to be said as to why the hashtags uses the word ‘too’ as if to imply the notion is rare. Upon googling black girls graduating there was no real representation until we stumbled upon the hash tag #blackgirlsgraduatetoo or any real representation of us…women who resembled my sister and I.
The fact is Ravon graduation photo reaffirms the notion that
Black Girls are Educated
Black Girls Rock
Black girls can be Scholars
And most importantly Black Girls GRADUATE.