In 1954, when Nelson was a freshman college student, he became the personal barber to the then twenty-five-year-old Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. King first selected College Hill as the place to get his haircut as a matter of convenience: He lived down the street from the barbershop, and the church where he pastored, where he spent a considerable amount of time, was not far away. There were other barbershops in Montgomery, but because of segregation, there were only a few where African Americans could get their hair cut—and precisely because of that lack of choice, College Hill soon became more than just a barbershop.
King walked into the barbershop one day just as Nelson was about to rush off to his ten a.m. class at Alabama State College, but Nelson didn’t think anything of it. He recalls, “A prospective customer parked in front of the barbershop and came in asking who could give him a nice trim.” Nelson was initially nervous to do so—he never liked to start a client’s haircut after twenty minutes to the hour, because one head usually took him at least fifteen minutes. The semester had just started, and he didn’t want to be late, but on that morning, he told me, “I looked at this short black man who had just jumped out of a car, and I said to myself, ‘Oh, heck. I can knock him out in ten minutes.’”
As with any new customer, Nelson asked his name and where he was from. King told him he had recently moved to Montgomery and that he was the new preacher at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Nelson was a member.
Once he had finished cutting King’s hair, Nelson handed him a mirror and asked if he liked the cut, to which King responded, “It’s pretty good.”
“Now, when you tell a barber that a haircut is ‘good,’ that’s somewhat of an insult,” Nelson told me with a big smile.
When Reverend King came back two weeks later, Nelson was busy working on another customer. Even though the other barber’s chair was vacant, King waited for him to finish. When Nelson’s chair opened up, the reverend came over and sat down, and Nelson began cutting his hair. He remembered the unenthusiastic assessment King had offered of his work the last time he was there, so Nelson said, “That must have been a pretty good haircut you got the last time you were here, huh?”
“You’re all right,” King said.
One question would soon arise.
Now, most of the time, after the second or third haircut, a new customer gives the barber a tip if they’re satisfied. But after I cut Martin’s hair at least seven or eight times, I noticed that he never gave me a tip. So one day I decided to use a little psychology on him, and I asked, “Reverend, when you finish preaching a sermon at church on Sunday morning, and the church members tell you that you delivered a good sermon, doesn’t that make you feel good?”
He said, “Yes.”
So, I continued, “When you go to a restaurant and you have a nice meal and the waitress gives you great service, in return, you give her a tip, right? Don’t you think that makes her feel good?”
He said, “Yes.”
Then Martin said to me, “Do you read your Bible? The Bible says you’re supposed to give 10 percent of your earnings in church. Do you give 10 percent of your earnings to the church?”
I responded by explaining, “Rev, I’m a student at Alabama State College right now. I can’t afford to give 10 percent of my earnings to the church.”
He said, “Well, I’m the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and I can’t afford to tip you, either.” Then we both began to laugh.
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In 1958, twenty-five-year-old Nelson and his brothers, Stephen and Spurgeon, left College Hill to open the Malden Brothers Barbershop at 407 S. Jackson Street, on the bottom level of the Ben Moore Hotel. They were inspired by their father’s legacy, himself an entrepreneur and barber. Nelson’s brother knew the hotel’s owner, Mrs. Moore, whose husband was deceased. Because she wanted to see young black men become entrepreneurs and businessmen, Mrs. Moore gave the brothers a financial break, allowing them to pay only one hundred dollars per month to rent the space for their barbershop. During the time she was alive, she never increased their rent.
The Ben Moore Hotel was located on the corner of High and Jackson Streets, and it stood tall in the skyline in comparison to the other two- and three-story buildings in the area. The Ben Moore had the first license that allowed lodging for blacks in Montgomery, and it was one of the only hotels in Alabama where blacks could stay. It was referred to, in those years, as “the best hotel south of the Ohio River” for blacks, and was the centerpiece of the segregated section of Montgomery.
In those years, blacks didn’t have many options as to where to open a business in Montgomery. Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation, and one of the many things prohibited to blacks was the opening of businesses outside segregated sections of the city. Segregation was overt oppression, and black Southerners were forced to live with it for almost one hundred years after the end of slavery in America. A black person couldn’t just go to any restaurant to eat or any barbershop to get a haircut.
The Ben Moore was frequented by the most elite black Southerners; some of the premier civil rights activists in Montgomery even lived there. Bayard Rustin, Dr. Benjamin Mays, and Mordecai Johnson, the first black president of Howard University, all stayed there for a time while working with others on strategies to fight the civil rights battle around America. On the hotel’s first floor was the Majestic Café, which was also black-owned and was an important meeting place in the black section of town and for black travelers visiting the city. Black musicians came to the Ben Moore to play jazz and perform in the rooftop garden of the hotel, which was referred to as the Afro Club. According to Nelson, the club boasted a clientele of beautiful, sophisticated, and intellectual African American women. “These were some of the most attractive black girls I had ever seen in my life,” he said. “They were all from the area or attended Alabama State.”
For the Malden brothers, opening a barbershop connected to the Ben Moore turned out to be a great business decision. Because of all the activity in the area, new clients were easy to come by, and having cut hair in College Hill for so many years, they had built solid client–barber relationships with many of their customers, who remained loyal when the Maldens opened their own shop. All the leading figures who were customers at College Hill, the doctors and professors, followed them to Jackson Street. When Reverend King followed, too, Nelson’s previous employers were devastated. And students continued to come as well, flooding in from Alabama State. Nelson estimated that at least 75 percent of the students at the college were regulars, as well as many of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, who often travelled from the nearby base to get haircuts. Even the black military men from Maxwell Field, later named Maxwell Air Force Base, became regulars. Legendary singers from the old school, like Little Richard and B.B. King, also stopped in from time to time.
The young minds and passionate personalities at the barbershop made its atmosphere electrifying. It was one of the few institutions of business in Montgomery where black people could sit together undisturbed and talk about anything and everything.
The black barbershop and the black church were the only places we had. At that time, we didn’t realize the value of the black barbershop. It was one of the few places where we could congregate and express ourselves in a community atmosphere. There were many subjects that we passionately discussed, like politics, the government, racism, and women. We could express what we really felt about issues that affected our lives. It was like a sanctuary, and that’s what made it so unique. And you could say things that you couldn’t say in the church. You couldn’t go to the church and talk about most of the things we talked about in the barbershop. In the barbershop, you could talk about anything that you wanted, like race, sports, or sex. You could talk about how hard Jackie Robinson hit the baseball in a game the previous night. When Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling, I remember people ran out of the barbershop and into the street, hollering and screaming, “Joe knocked out Max Schmeling, Joe knocked out Schmeling.” This was a place where we felt comfortable opening up and talking, almost like