Skip to content
Life
Link copied to clipboard

The Interview: Woody Woodard, Wynnefield's barber-to-the-stars

ROBERT "WOODY" Woodard's barbershop is a Wynnefield fixture, with a clientele of the famous and the not-so-famous. He treats them all the same.

ROBERT "WOODY" Woodard's barbershop is a Wynnefield fixture, with a clientele of the famous and the not-so-famous. He treats them all the same.

Michael Jackson, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, singer Nina Simone, and former Sixers Moses Malone and Charles Barkley have all sat in Woody's chair. One photo in the shop shows Michael Jackson posed in Woodard's 1947 Cadillac. Another shows Woodard and Simone propped on the hood.

Woodard is founder of Barbershop Talk Human Family Day, an annual spring celebration of racial unity. He's also a prolific contributor to talk radio programs and newspaper opinion pages - recently on the topic of gentrification in Philadelphia.

Woody's Barbershop is on Diamond Street, at Bryn Mawr Avenue. Staff writer Valerie Russ caught up with him there.

Q Why have so many famous musicians and NBA stars come into your shop over the years?

Georgie Woods [the late WDAS-AM and WHAT-AM radio DJ] was the first black customer to come into my shop. After he came in, whenever people came to town for shows, Woods told them about me.

Q Woods was your first black customer? How did you meet him?

For my first year as a barber, [at a different shop on Wynnefield Avenue at Bryn Mawr] all of my customers were white. I had taken over the shop for a white barber.

After one customer's wife suggested I would continue to do good business if I kept cutting only straight hair, I put a sign out front that said: "We cut all types of hair."

Most black people thought I was a white barber. I think Georgie drove by, saw the sign and was going to test this barber to see if he really would cut his hair.

He came in and saw that I was black. After that, [the late Daily News columnist] Chuck Stone wrote a column about me, and black people started to steadily come in and most of the white customers drifted away.

Q Why did you start Barbershop Talk Human Family Day?

At the time [16 years ago], I had a radio show called Barbershop Talk, first on WHAT and later on WURD. I started Human Family Day to make the point that everybody is part of a family called the human family and part of one race.

We have to not be afraid to share our knowledge with each other, whether the person is white, Asian, Latino, Indian, or African. Dr. King had a civil rights movement, now we have a human rights movement. We had a Mummers String Band come to our Human Family Day last month at Union Baptist Church in South Philly. That was also the church that Marian Anderson belonged to.

Q You like to say there is no such thing as racism because we're all members of the same human race. Yet in the late '90s, you were in the news protesting a racial attack in Grays Ferry.

People can't be racist against another person because there's only one race. Now, I do believe a person can be prejudiced, bigoted, hateful and can discriminate. But I believe we are only one race with different shades of skin color.

Q You are no longer hosting a radio show. Do you have any plans to return to broadcasting at some point?

I'm getting ready to try to start an internet-based radio show, upstairs above the barbershop.

Q You have proposed to City Councilman Kenyatta Johnson that the city open an office for longtime city residents. Why are you suggesting that?

If the city wants to continue to be known as a city of neighborhoods, then there should be an office to promote continuing the traditions of different city neighborhoods and supporting long-term city residents.

If all of the city becomes occupied by newcomers, the city will lose a lot of the cultural richness it has in traditional neighborhoods.

It's very sad when a community disappears. I am one of only one or two property owners who grew up in my block, near the Marian Anderson Recreation Center in South Philadelphia. All of my friends have moved away.

The churches are being sold and converted to condos. It's the loss of community and the loss of history.