Preserving the Memory of Style & Grace
History and Community in South Madison
By Kevin Walters
For long-time residents of South Madison, the title of Linda Friend’s 2010 documentary “Style & Grace” needs little explanation. They know that Style & Grace was a barbershop at 1610 Gilson Street that served as a gathering place for the city’s Black community for decades. This past November 3rd, the Madison Trust’s Community Education Comittee was proud to co-host a screening of the film, which shows a day in the life of the barbers, their customers, and the sense of neighborhood belonging they sustained.
The title screen from “Style & Grace” film screening. Image courtesy of PBS Wisconsin. (Click photos to enlarge)
Thanks to our partners at PBS Wisconsin, both the film and the discussion that followed was recorded and is now available online for public viewing. The Community Education Committee encourages everyone to check out the link and we hope you enjoy the entire event as much as those of us who attended in person. We’re also grateful to the UW South Madison Partnership for providing the venue, to the Odyssey Project and Professors Nidia Bañuelos and Jamal Jones for inviting us into their classroom, and to Melly Mel’s Soul Food for providing refreshments. A special thank you goes to Char Braxton, the Odyssey staff member whose hospitality and assistance with the catering really made the evening something special.
Jamal Jones, Nidia Banuelos, and Char Braxton with the catering from Melly Mell’s. Photo by Kevin Walters
Our goal in putting on the screening grew directly out of the Community Education Committee’s charge to expand our engagement with parts of the city that have been underrepresented in historic preservation efforts and to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion into the Trust’s mission. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that the Style & Grace barber shop first came to the attention of the Committee by way of the City of Madison’s Underrepresented Communities Historic Resource Survey Report (see page 138). The Trust held a series of virtual events about the City’s process and findings, which are available on our YouTube channel.
The building a 1610 Gilson Street, once home to Ben’s Barber Shop and Style & Grace. Photo from the City of Madison’s Underrepresented Communities Historic Resource Survey Report.
As the report captures, the historic importance of the business that came to be known as Style & Grace began with Jackie and Jimmy’s Beauty Shop in the 1950s. Originally located in the Greenbush neighborhood and owned and operated by the Reverend Jim C. Wright and his wife Jackie Wright, the salon and barber shop was one of the earliest Black-owned businesses in Madison. Rev. Wright went on to pastor Mount Zion Baptist Church and is now the namesake of Wright Middle School. In 1962, Ben Parks, a barber who worked at Jackie and Jimmy’s for several years, opened his own business in a new building at 1610 Gilson Street under the name Ben’s Barber Shop. When Mr. Parks retired in the late 1990s, the shop was taken over by Taylor “Smitty” Smith, who himself had been a barber in Madison since the 1950s. Mr. Smitty renamed it Style & Grace and operated it together with fellow barber Clarence Brown.
Mr. Smitty and Mr. Brown are both featured in “Style & Grace,” the documentary. When Community Education Committee member Margaret Nellis brought the film to the committee’s attention and told us it hadn’t been shown since the Wisconsin Film Festival in 2010, we knew we had a golden opportunity to reintroduce this historic place to a new generation. We reached out to Linda Friend and, together, we quickly decided that South Madison residents should have the first chance to see the film in person. A story by David Dahmer for Madison 365, published in advance of the event, provides some more details about the planning process.
Mr. Brown and Mr. Smitty inside Style & Grace. Photo courtesy of Linda Friend.
We were especially interested in screening “Style & Grace” because, as historic preservationists know all too well, a written report can only capture a fraction of the vibrancy embedded in historic places. To truly understand the impact of history, you really have to experience it for yourself. Sadly, while the building still stands, Style & Grace closed permanently a few years after the film was completed. That makes it all the more fortunate that Linda recorded the shop in its heyday. Watching her film, you can feel the built environment that surrounded the barbers and their clients. You can see the familiar Madison street signs on the corner and the distinctive Madison Metro buses rounding those corners. You can even see the silhouette of street number 1610 through the glass door as customers come and go, getting their hair cut and their beards trimmed, or talking and playing checkers while they wait.
A barber trimming a mustache at Style & Grace. Photo courtesy of Linda Friend.
The sense of place is so strong in Linda’s documentary that I would invite white viewers of the film (like me) to consider a thought experiment as we watch. If no one had told you where the film takes place, if you weren’t familiar with the Metro buses or the street signs, would you have recognized it as the same Madison we think we know so well? Would you have guessed that the neighborhood is just a few miles from Bascom Hall, Olbrich Botanical Gardens, or the Keenan House? Speaking for myself, I’m not sure I would have figured it out.
Of course, I’m a transplant, not a native, so perhaps I’m easily confused. But my cognitive dissonance poses a challenge that Madison area historic preservation should take seriously. For too long, too many of us have not considered South Madison to be as quintessentially historic as the more famous neighborhoods circling the shores of the four lakes.
JP Patterson displaying his poster for the Taylor “Smitty” Smith Scholarship Fund. Photo by Kevin Walters.
Anyone who watches the discussion we recorded should be firmly dissuaded from making any easy assumptions about the historic importance of South Madison. Deana Wright, the daughter of Rev. Jim and Jackie Wright, shared her memories of how her parents and their neighbors built the building from the ground up. Jeff “JP” Patterson, now the owner of JP Hair Design, told us about his days being mentored by Mr. Smitty, and how his business strives to build a sense of community that can carry forward the lessons he learned– not just about hair but about life – to the next generation of Madison barbers.
I hesitate to write too much more about the stories we heard that night. I’d prefer Madison Trust members have a chance to watch the film and experience the conversation for themselves. Suffice to say, there’s nothing more Madisonian than the stories that Linda Friend captured on film, and that Deana and JP Patterson were so gracious in sharing. We should be listening.
To support and preserve the ongoing mission of Black barber shops in Madison, consider contributing to the Taylor “Smitty” Smith Scholarship fund by contacting JP Hair Design through the Contact page on their website or by email at jphair584@cs.com. The first recipient of the scholarship, Isaiah Valdes, completed his apprenticeship this fall and earned his barber license.