"Before it was the perfectly round Afro, it was a statement," Tharps told BuzzFeed. "To say, 'No more. Appreciate my beauty.'" The Afro was black Americans' way of letting white America — and black America — know that we no longer need to conform to a white aesthetic. She said it was revolutionary because before Civil Rights, tracing back to slavery, black women and men knew that to be perceived as "respectable," their hair had to be as close to white people's as possible.

The Afro evolved to a signature style among black people, made popular by the likes of the Jackson Five and Diana Ross. And like with so many things, black people do them first, and then they spread into mainstream culture, Tharps pointed out. "There's a mimicking without acknowledging, and that's the problem," she reiterated. "It's a plucking of the culture and not acknowledging where you got the pieces from."