MILWAUKEE COUNTY

Already seen as safe spaces to talk, barber shops and salons now respond to trauma in clients

Talis Shelbourne
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Kwabena Antoine Nixon, left, listens as his barber since 2004, Richard Armstead, talks about the importance of developing strong ties with clients at Gee's Clippers.

When she’s not in a hair salon cutting, layering or coloring a client’s hair, Simmone Kilgore spends most of her weekdays counseling people as a licensed psychologist.

And when it comes to how she approaches her work — assessing clients when they come in, gaining insight into their needs, providing them guidance — she said there's not a dramatic difference.

That’s why Kilgore, along with leading mental health professional Ramel Kweku Akyirefi Smith, have been leading training sessions to give hair stylists and barbers more tools to help address their clients’ trauma.

For African American men and women, barbershops and hair salons are community hubs — and safe spaces — for learning, storytelling and advice. At the same time, African Americans traditionally shy away from addressing mental trauma through psychologists and psychiatrists.

With those two things in mind, Reggie Moore, director of the city’s Office of Violence Prevention, used funds from a federal ReCAST (Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma) grant to fund multiple training sessions. 

The "Style and Substance: Mental Health and Community Resource Training" sessions are part of the Office of Violence Prevention's efforts to find innovative ways to address trauma.

Gee’s Clippers

When Kwabena Antoine Nixon, a poet and community organizer, needs a haircut, he goes to Gee’s Clippers.

And if there’s something weighing heavy on his mind, you can find him in the same place.

“Historically, black men were told during slavery you can’t have real conversations. Here, you can go from talking about women to politics to sports … it’s just a safe hub.”

Gaulien “Gee” Smith, the owner of Gee’s Clippers, has attended multiple Style and Substance sessions; it’s this type of dedication to go beyond barbering that has given him a reputation beyond the borders of this city.

Nixon, who is originally from Chicago, heard about the shop before he ever moved to Milwaukee.

When Smith invited him to give a poetry session, Nixon was uneasy because of the shop's high-profile clientele — Bucks and Packers players, for example — and whether it was the right fit. But after meeting Gee, he decided to come in.

That was in 2003.

Now he comes regularly for the conversation, the high standards, safe environment and his barber, Richard Armstead.

Armstead said he didn’t realize the role he played for his clients until a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor described him as a social scientist.

“It made me feel good,” he said. “The African American black man is the least protected, respected; his pain, his voice is muffled. At the barbershop, he can feel like it’s at least heard.”

Sometimes that means talking his clients down, such as when a group of men, including Nixon, got into a heated discussion over politics and race — in particular, whether to vote for Marvin Pratt, who was running for mayor.

"It got heated. Some people said it’s good to have a black mayor. Others said you don’t need a mayor just because he’s black; I think I called someone a fool,” Nixon recalled, laughing.

The shops are like families, a mix of new and familiar characters that come together and share a bond.

Armstead has watched some of his clients over a lifetime: “I’ve been to the funeral home. I’ve given them their first haircut and I’ve done their last haircut.”

Beauty Masters

Simmone Kilgore, cuts the hair of client Juanda Hall at her salon, Beauty Masters, in Milwaukee.

Kilgore, the trauma therapist, has been in cosmetology for 25 years, and understands the importance of the stylist and client relationship.

“The trust of my clients that is built up over the years is like no other,” she said.

Juanda Hall, 53, has had Kilgore as a stylist since 2006 and described her as a confidant.

When she found out she was diagnosed with stage 5 kidney failure, Hall said Kilgore got her through.

“I was just carrying that load; I wasn’t sharing it with anybody,” she said. “It was almost like she knew, she could sense something was going on and she asked me.

“She hugged me and she let me know that everything was going to be all right.”

Kilgore, Hall said, is always like that.

“She doesn’t go for the surface,” Hall explained. “It’s like, ‘No, tell me how your day was.’ There’s almost no subject that we can’t touch.”

That happens even when Kilgore is struggling with her own issues.

“I’m interested in them (clients). This is a safe place where you can connect and share information. This is something you can’t get at a therapist office,” Kilgore said.

After her mom passed away, Kilgore said, she struggled — and found the roles could be reversed.

“You share stories and tears. You feel like you are valued. It’s a place to release your stressors and things that are really pressing,” Kilgore said.

That environment keeps clients coming back.

“I look forward to getting my hair done here," Hall said. “It’s women building women, because she knows me and talks to me about everything.”

'Behind the chair'

Many stylists and others in similar professions have attended the trauma care training sessions, such as Johanna Duckworth, a wardrobe stylist and the owner of Lifestyle; Ed Hendricks, who started at Gee’s Clippers after earning his barber and cosmetology degree in prison and now runs the Hair Code; and Lazonnie Belton (known as “Miss Bee” to everyone), a 30-year cosmetology veteran and president, CEO and teacher at Visions in Hair Design Institute of Cosmetology.

The hope is that bringing trauma specialists to spaces where people are already comfortable sharing trauma will lead to an entire community getting more resources for treatment.

It's all part of how Smith and Kilgore want stylists to consider not only what's on their clients' heads, but also, what's in their heads.

"I value that education of being behind the chair," she said. "I love that we’re now appreciating the intersection between psychology and cosmetology."

Angela Peterson of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Contact Talis Shelbourne at (414) 223-5261 or tshelbourn@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @talisseer and Facebook at @talisseer

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