My Freedom Wig: A Teenage Bus Driver and her Time-Cutting Tricks

“We call that our ‘Freedom Wig,” Janice said as she pulled the cap over my head. A fluffy crown of tight brown curls sprung out around my face.

She handed me a hand mirror and had me check my reflection in the brightly lit mirror behind me. A few long strands of my auburn hair straggled down along my neck. Janice pushed them up under the cap.

“There,” Janice sounded a triumphant note. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know….”

“You look good, girl!”

“I’m not sure it looks natural.”

“Oh no, it becomes you.”

That’s not exactly what I meant. It looked like I had an afro.

I had gone to the Crabtree Valley Mall to buy shoes but had wandered into the wig store on a lark.

Maybe a wig was just what I needed.

It was hard to get up early enough in the morning to wash my hair before I had to start my 7-a.m. bus route. If I didn’t wash my hair at least every three days, it looked flat and stringy, and I’d spend the day feeling like I had an old mop dripping down my back.

There was nothing worse for a teenage girl.

On days when I couldn’t drag myself out of bed early enough to wash and dry my hair, I’d put it in a braid or wrap it in a scarf. I’d gotten pretty creative with the latter, heading off to school looking like a fortune teller.

Still, I needed something new. If I had a wig, I could tuck the stringy stuff up under a fashionable coiffure and buy myself time until the weekend. I could pamper myself then with a leisurely shower, shampoo and condition my long hair, and then let it air dry.

But an afro?

I had thought I’d get a short and sassy wig, a Sassoon hairdo like Twiggy used to sport. Or maybe something a bit more edgy, like Liza Minnelli in “Cabaret.”

I didn’t see anything like that in the store, though. A quick scan of the display cases revealed that all the wigs seemed to be for African American women.

I’ll just make a quiet exit, I told myself, but Janice had stopped me.

When I explained that I didn’t think the wigs were right for me, she pulled the Freedom wig out and set it on my head.

“This isn’t an afro,” Janice corrected. “It’s a ‘Freedom’ wig. See, the curls are looser, freer. Any woman can rock a Freedom wig. It doesn’t’ matter what color you are!”

I must have looked less than convinced.

“It’s perfect on you,” Janice drew her face alongside mine and we exchanged glances in the mirror. Her skin was much darker than mine, but I noticed that she had freckles, too. Just like me. I could have been wrong, but was she wearing a Freedom wig, too?

“Foxy Brown!” she said, referring to the beautiful Pam Grier. “You look like her.”

Janice was a good saleswoman.

I bought the wig. It even came with its own little Styrofoam head, just like the one my mother had for her wig. Maybe that’s the real reason I decided to buy a wig, because she had one, too.

She kept the Styrofoam head on her dresser. My younger brother and I took a Bic pen one afternoon when we were bored and drew in eyes and a mouth. Later we added a goatee, just for fun.

“You’ve got an afro!?”

My brother doubled over with laughter when I came down to breakfast the next morning.

“It’s a Freedom wig,” I corrected.

Mother looked skeptical but kept quiet.

The kids in my neighborhood didn’t say much when I opened the bus door to let them in. I think they were still half asleep.

I drove them across town, as I did every school day. Busing was the centerpiece of the desegregation legislation in the state. I drove the kids from my suburban neighborhood—where all the split-level houses looked like they might have been copied from the set of the Brady Bunch—to Ligon Junior High School, in what was known (to whites) as Raleigh’s “inner city.”

Ligon had been built in 1953 to serve all African Americans in the Raleigh City School System. Named for the prominent religious, educational, and community leader, John W. Ligon (1869-1925), the junior-senior high school had a proud legacy of excellence. Then, in 1971, in answer to the calls to desegregate, it was turned into a junior high school and students were bused there from all over Wake County.

After I dropped my first route at Ligon, I’d start my second, picking up the children who lived near the school. I’d return with them to my neighborhood, letting them out at York Elementary School, the same school I had attended only a few years earlier.

The little children shrieked when I opened the door to let them on bus.

“What happened to your hair?” one little girl asked.

“Is that a wig?” another chimed in.

“No, no, this is MY hair,” I teased.

When she didn’t believe me, I let her give the wig a tug. She was seated behind me by then. I stealthily held the front of the wig in place while she pulled. The wig didn’t budge. Her friend gave a try as well and I pretended to scream in pain.

“Ouch, ouch, that hurts!”

They were convinced.

But not for long.

Soon the children knew I was wearing a wig, and they didn’t seem to care.

I didn’t wear it every day. Maybe once a week. And when I did, the children would clamor and laugh as they stepped onto the bus.

Wearing my Freedom Wig with Becky Street (left) and Carey McGinnity (right)

“Driver Becky’s wearing her Freedom wig!”

They were so little.

I wonder what their parents thought, sending them off to a school over ten miles away in a white neighborhood with a white bus driver wearing a “Freedom wig.”

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