Michael Dickens spent forty years practicing medicine in Charlottesville, but he also nurtured a passion for history, and when he retired, the downtown business association offered him a job – researching the history of every space on Main Street -- including the city’s popular pedestrian mall.
“I was really interested in finding out who had worked and lived at these addresses and what kind of interesting stories could we tell about them,“ he says.
After six months, he had written 45 essays – each about a thousand words. One especially useful source he consulted was a directory published in the 1880’s.
“The city directories were like their version of the telephone book, except that they not only had people listed alphabetically listed, but they also have the equivalent of a yellow pages where people were listed in terms of the businesses they were pursuing," he explains. "Being in the era of Jim Crow, If the resident of the address or the owner of the business at that address was Black, there would be a little “C” in parenthesis behind their name or in later editions an asterisk.”
And that led to a surprising discovery.
“There were nine or ten barbers total for the city of Charlottesville in the directory, and all of them were Black. All of them. There were no white barbers.”
He surmised that society after the Civil War considered personal care a suitable job for people who did that work when they were enslaved.
“Barbering was still looked upon as a trade that was somehow related to servitude, and if you look at where the barber shops were located, they were often near banks and railroad stations so they could provide services to the professionals. There was a wonderful barber shop up at the corner providing services for the students and professors.”
And in their own community they were widely respected.
”The barbers, because they were sort of a profession, were role models, and we have some wonderful pictures from the early 1900’s of some of these barbers, standing proudly in their barber jackets and ties in front of their shops.”
Dickens found many were leaders who worked to ensure Black residents had access to education and legal protection.
“They were very interested in the educational development of the Black community. Many of their children went on to get college degrees. They became teachers. They became dentists, physicians. One of the barbers was a member of the city council back in the 1870’s under reconstruction, and they were very involved in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s in the civil rights movement.”
It’s not clear where Black residents of the area went for their haircuts – maybe to the barbers’ homes or to the shops after hours.
“They provided a safe haven for men in the community to come together inside their shops and to discuss the affairs of the day," Dickens says. "What was going on in the community, how did they need to organize.”
The barbers’ individual stories shed intriguing light on the values and attitudes of their times.
“This particular location right here – 105 E. Third – was owned by John West and his son Harry, who were both barbers. John West was born during the Civil War, raised by Nancy West. He was her adopted son, but Nancy West was a Black woman who was a very prominent landowner on the mall, married to David Isaacs, who was from the Jewish community.”
Tours of the Black barbershops are advertised on the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society’s website, and later this year Michael Dickens plans to publish his essays on Main Street residents and businesses in a book titled Door to Door.
