University of Virginia Library

Cook County Barbershop

Reprinted from The Washington Post.

When the Cleveland Indians force one of
the baseball players they own to have a
haircut before spring training or pay a
thousand-dollar fine, or when the Armed
Services lay down the law on acceptable hair
styles, it is one thing - arguable, but in some
degree defensible. When the people who run
Cook County, Illinois, shave off people's hair
and whiskers in jail and then exhibit
photographs of them at political rallies it is
something else - vulgar, offensive,
indefensible.

Perhaps Mr. Winston Moore,
superintendent of the Cook County jail in
Chicago, was only doing his job when he
ordered hearings for the Chicago
five-plus-two (except one, David Dellinger,
who is apparently too bald to have
objectionably long hair) for "sanitary
reasons." That is hard to believe, however,
when you learn that County Sheriff Joseph
Woods - who is running for chairman of the
Cook County Board of Commissioners -
immediately displayed pictures of the six men
to the guffawing audience at a suburban
Republican organization meeting, boasting
that "this is just to show you we Republicans
get things done." Maybe he expects to get
elected on the basis of responsibility for this
act of clear political courage, this victory over
such an outrageous form of dissent as long
hair and beards.

The haircuts of the defendants, now free
on bail, almost certainly [will] become a
cause celebre, a symbol on both sides of the
case, and the danger is that they will obscure
some of the more important issues involved in
this trial which never should have taken place.
There is a nagging suspicion that the haircuts
were ordered for purposes of humiliation
rather than sanitation, and that they could
have been delayed pending appeal of the
convictions. Mr. Woods and others may
believe, however, that this is the key to
breaking the will of those they consider to be
"hippies." It is not, of course, the key to
anything, except perhaps to the character of
those who operate Cook County's barbershop.