Willie Morrow, an bold Black haircare inventor, chemist, creator, and entrepreneur, was devoted to serving the Black neighborhood by making assets accessible of their neighborhoods.
The longtime San Diego resident, whose legacy undoubtedly lives on, died June 22 at his dwelling, surrounded by his household, The San Diego Union-Tribune stories. He was 82.
A memorial tribute has been scheduled for July 15 at The Bayview Church of San Diego, beginning at 11 a.m.
Morrow was born on Oct. 9, 1939, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. According to his daughter, Cheryl Morrow, her father relocated to San Diego at 18 to “strive my concepts and imaginative and prescient in a metropolis I had learn was the Harlem of the West.”
“America’s Finest City” was the “excellent” metropolis for the Morrow patriarch to pursue his entrepreneurial desires.
“For many Black folks from the South, San Diego turned dwelling due to army service and jobs, and my father noticed a chance to flourish by supplying the sweetness wants of African American army personnel and civilians. He turned a Black haircare firm right into a tech-design industrial big,” Cheryl instructed The San Diego Union-Tribune.
She added, “He simply believed in neighborhood being the supply of the economic system. That you shouldn’t must exit of your individual neighborhood for the assets and wealth that you simply wanted. It must be in your neighborhood. And it simply so occurred that due to the cultural iconography of Black hair, it was such an industrial powerhouse that it funded different issues.”
The magnificence pioneer initially provided his haircare companies at 4165 Market Street in San Diego, from the Afro coiffure to the Afro choose comb to the chilly wave curl, from the primary utility patented Eze-Teze hair styling comb to the primary blow dryer attachment comb, and many extra. He specialised in hairstyling and barbering.
Morrow’s hair merchandise enterprise helped fund his radio station and newspaper in the identical constructing, offering neighborhood engagement and inexpensive promoting alternatives for small-business homeowners. As Cheryl tells it, her father’s “most proud achievement” was proudly owning and managing XHRM, San Diego Monitor News and California Curl from 1977 to 1990.
“Those companies turned one of many largest employers of African American San Diegans by one African American man within the historical past of San Diego,” she stated.
At age 28, Morrow turned Delta Air Lines’ youngest Flying Colonel. He notably taught arts and sciences of Afro hair all through the U.S. Department of Defense army bases on each continent.
In 2016, the Museum at California Center for the Arts in Escondido curated an exhibit honoring Dr. Morrow and his accomplishments. The exhibit featured 400 years’ value of artifacts, images, historic accounts, propaganda, and way more.
“Thank you, San Diego, for giving an Alabama boy the truth of desires fulfilled. Willie L. Morrow, [is] a person whose life wanted neither introduction nor exit. The nice San Diego craftsman left items of himself together with his beloved neighborhood, reminiscences within the repositories of individuals’s hearts,” Cheryl stated.
Willie Morrow is survived by his spouse, Gloria; their daughters, Cheryl and Angela; and many members of his prolonged household.
https://www.blackenterprise.com/willie-morrow-black-media-pioneer-and-afro-pick-inventor-passes-away-at-82/
