Originally from Ethiopia, Miriam Tigist Green, 4, was adopted by Emory professor Clifton Green and his wife in 2005. This is her hair unbraided, before her father applies his weekly loving touch. His care and attention to detail show mastery of a task few white men ever contemplate.
---Joey Ivansco / AJC
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Perfect braids show depth of dad's devotion
By MICHELLE HISKEY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/15/08
Clifton Green waited a decade to become a dad, imagining he would be like the man who raised him and made him feel like the most special kid in the world.
That day came in 2005, when Green and his wife adopted daughter Miriam Tigist from an Ethiopian orphanage.
Suddenly, fatherhood demanded a task few white men ever contemplate: hours of cleaning, combing, twisting and braiding African hair.
Such skills typically are handed down from older family members and, as this Emory University associate professor of finance discovered, take hours of practice. In the wrong hands, hair like his daughter's can break off.
"Besides the color of her skin, her hair is one of the few ways we are different," Green said last week as he twisted the thick curls of Miriam, now 4. "The more tangled it is, the more it hurts, the more she protests — in that way, it's pretty universal."
By knowing how to make straight parts, neat twists and careful braids, he has earned high-fives from stunned African-Americans.
"That meek and mild guy? He does not do her hair! You could have picked me off the floor when I found out," said Latise Egeston, an African-American counselor at Miriam's preschool. "Her hair looks fabulous every day, and I know what it takes."
.....................................
Posts
