It Takes 300 Hours to Become a Shampooer in Tennessee
3rd May 2016
Tammy Nutall-Pritchard had been braiding hair with her older sister, Debra Nutall, since she was 18 years old.
Nutall taught Nutall-Pritchard the craft when she was 15, and the sisters would stand side-by-side behind the chairs of scores of clients at Nutall’s Memphis, Tenn., salon who came in to get their hair braided while chatting and gossiping with customers.
Nutall-Pritchard did well—she charged around $300 per head and sometimes made more than $1,000 each week.
“It gave me joy,” Nutall-Pritchard, 47, told The Daily Signal of working with her sister. “She told me, ‘You learn a skill, it will bring an income for you if you do it the right way.’ She taught me to be the woman I am today, and she taught me that you can be your own boss.”
But Tennessee’s onerous licensing laws governing natural hair stylists like Nutall and Nutall-Pritchard eventually drove Nutall out of the state she and her family have called home their whole lives.
As a result, Nutall-Pritchard, who worked at the shop for more than six years, was out of a job.
Black Lives Matter, but apparently Black Jobs Don’t.