Willie Lee Morrow. (Photo courtesy San Diego History Center)
He was an inventor, an entrepreneur, a media pioneer, an educator, a teacher, and a mentor whose cultural legacy reached far beyond his adopted hometown of San Diego.
Now Willie Lee Morrow, who died in 2022, has a San Diego street named after him after a years-long attempt to honor his storied legacy.
Morrow’s name was unveiled Thursday – on what would have been his 85th birthday – on Tooley Street in Encanto, during a ceremony presided over by San Diego City Councilmember Henry Foster III and activist and advocate Shane Harris, who was an the original architect of the years-long effort to memorialize him.
“This is not just a street sign,” Harris said in a statement. “It’s a symbol of how one man’s brilliance and commitment to his people can leave a legacy that still uplifts generations today.”
Harris’s proposal was later brought before the San Diego City Council by Councilmember Henry Foster, who represents District 4 and who sponsored the measure.
“Dr. Willie L. Morrow was an extraordinary innovator, entrepreneur, and community builder whose influence reached far beyond San Diego,” Foster said. “The idea to honor Dr. Morrow with a street naming began with local advocate Shane Harris, who brought the proposal forward.”
Foster added that Morrow’s daughter, Cheryl Morrow, also strongly supported the effort to help ensure that her father’s legacy remained alive.
“It was then my honor to bring this item to the City Council, where it was approved unanimously.”
Morrow was born in Alabama in 1939, but moved to San Diego to attend the Independent Barber College here, graduating in 1959 and later opening his own barbershop on Market Street.
Hair – as with all aspects of individual expression and style – is highly political, and Black hair even more so, with the fraught specter of racism and discrimination hanging over every action undertaken by people of color in the United States.
Morrow took that challenge on directly, creating the Afro pick as natural hair caught on in the 1960s. He also pioneered the curl relaxer treatment he called the California Curl, which was later called the Jheri curl, and transformed hair care forever.
“He mentored generations of barbers, stylists, and young entrepreneurs, showing that success was possible without leaving your community behind,” said Foster. “His life’s work reflected pride, creativity, and a deep commitment to empowerment.
“He created opportunities for others – whether through his barbershop, his pioneering work in Black hair care, or his media ventures that amplified Black voices too often left out of the conversation.”
Morrow also spent years traveling around the world on a Department of Defense contract, visiting bases to teach the military the proper ways to cut Black hair.
His venue would go on to be the eponymous subject of professional athlete-turned-artist Ernie Barnes’ famous painting, “Willie’s Barbershop.”
But hair was not the chemist’s only focus. During the course of his career, he would go on to found XHRM – now Magic 92.5 – in 1979, which was followed by his establishment of the San Diego Monitor, a Black-focused newspaper, in 1986.
“This was where my father built his dreams,” Cheryl Morrow, who serves as the Monitor’s publisher, said in a statement. “When people drive down Willie Morrow Way, I want them to feel inspired – to know that brilliance can come from their own neighborhoods.”
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