Amirhea Bishop
A Beauty Shop Hair Story

Growing up, I spent countless hours in the salon chair of Mrs. Robin’s Beauty Shop. As I had a hot comb pressed to my head or cornrows braided to my scalp, I learned numerous life lessons from her, her family, and her clients. This commercial highlights the tradition and culture that the beauty shop holds for Black women throughout their lifetimes. It shows the evolution of a child growing up to be a teenager and young adult in the shop while Mrs. Robin plays herself as the constant in the growing child’s life. This place gave me structure, security, and community in a time and place that does the opposite for most little Black girls in the South. I am forever grateful and indebted to Mrs. Robin for creating space for me in her home, heart, and hair salon.

Amirhea Bishop is a student and creative from Madison, Ms. Her mission in life is to highlight, document, and create stories about Southern Black women who have gone unheard, unseen, and unacknowledged, thus expanding the narrative of the South and black womanhood. She is an alumna of Jackson State University and is a first-year MA student in the Southern Studies program at the University of Mississippi. Amirhea serves as the research assistant to faculty fellow W. Ralph Eubanks for the Black Power at Ole Miss Task Force committee, which documents the stories and preserves the legacy of the Ole Miss 89 through oral histories. She plans to blend different disciplines, such as business, humanities, and the social sciences, across multi-media platforms to document and propagate the unabridged stories of the American South that highlight it as a diverse and complex place.