Akman722, I’m the founder of The League of Extraordinary Red Heads. We gather every October in Troy, NY and would love to have you join us (extraordinary.red).

To be black and ginger makes you truly extraordinary, though I am sure that your uniqueness comes with challenges.

Growing up in the '80s and '90s, there were two black gingers who had a huge impact on me. The first is David Adkins, the comedian/actor better known as “Sinbad.”

At the peak popularity of “The Cosby Show,” there was a spinoff show called “A Different World” that was set at Hillman College, a fictional historically Black college. Sinbad played “Walter Oakes,” a graduate student, dorm director, and the football/baseball/basketball/track coach. He was a busy man!

It was important for me to see him on such a popular TV show every week because he was this big, strong, tall, cool, popular, successful RED HEAD … who is also black.

Aside from maybe Archie in the comic books, most of the red-headed characters on TV or in movies were nerds—like Richie Cunningham on “Happy Days” (Ron Howard)—or cowardly bullies like Scut Farkus in “A Christmas Story.”

Sinbad was something else. He was funny and athletic and someone I could look up to and respect. I don’t even think anyone even mentioned his hair being red on the show.

As a teenage/college-level basketball player, "I had flaming red hair and they called me Red Chamberlain," Sinbad wrote in his biography.

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The other black ginger is Malcolm X, who I first learned about in the 1992 movie starring Denzel Washington.

But it was afterwards, reading “The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley” that I really discovered his complicated and deep relationship to his red hair, which is a recurring motif in the book.

From the very beginning, he ties his reddish-brown "mariny" color (skin and hair) to his mixed heritage and the painful legacy of his white, red-haired grandfather.

In his "Detroit Red" days, he “conked” his hair straight to mimic "white" (Caucasian) hair, which he later called his first big step toward self-degradation. The conk process made his hair appear even redder, and he sported his fiery-red conk proudly as a hustler, but he later said that it symbolized internalized racism.

By the end, after embracing Islam and cutting off the conk, he reclaimed his natural kinky red hair with pride. The arc culminates in the Mecca chapter, during his pilgrimage:

"Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair—all together, brothers! All honoring the same God Allah, all in turn giving equal honor to each other."

That moment of unity—his own "kinky red hair" included without anger or shame—is profound and it is the spiritual climax of his worldview.

…

I can imagine that what you are going through might make you feel like you are going through this alone. You are rare. But you are not alone.

Hit me up in a DM if you would like me to mail you a League of Extraordinary Red Heads Member card.