“did Sammy Davis Jr. “conk” his hair his whole life? Has he gotten shit for this? I ask cuz I’m reading malcom x’s autobiography and I just read the part where he goes off about what sellouts blacks that conked their hair were.

well, keith, Frank may have sung it, but Sammy lived it. if there was one person who did it his way, it was the little Black one eyed nappy haired jew who had a penchant for tall scandanavian blondes in an era when mixed-marriages were illegal in more than half of the states here in America.

sammy alluded to the fact that he lost his left eye possibly due to racism when driving from Vegas to Hollywood in a cadillac that was just given to him by the owner of the Sands. sammy was dating a nice young blonde girl and was driving to LA to buy a house in the ultra-white hollywood hills. all of this was just too much for some, and as he was driving suddenly he saw a car completely stopped on the highway just in front of him for no reason at all. sammy swerved to avoid the mysterious car and hit his head on the decorative cone in the center of his steering wheel and lost his eye.

things simmered when he took the advice of his friends and immediately married his first wife, a pretty black chorus girl on the strip who he barely knew.

the marriage didnt last long, and soon he was seen with the whitest women he could find.

and in 1960 right after his friend JFK won the presidency, due in part to sammy’s getting out the Black vote for kennedy, he married may brit despite the fact that 31 states still considered such a practice illegal and immoral.

when JFK retracted SDJ’s invite to his inaugural ball because of his sammy’s controversial marriage, the candy man’s feelings were hurt so much that years later when Richard Nixon called on Sammy to help with his coolness quotient, sammy– to the utter disbelief of the african-american community– accepted the invitation and became friendly with the republican.

sammy also did lots of cocaine which caused a huge rift between he and old Blue Eyes that lasted years, he also didnt pay his taxes that caused him serious financial injury with Uncle Sam, and he dabbled in satanism which drew ire from The Man Upstairs.

sammy answered only to sammy.

so, to answer your question, yes, keith, sammy did sport a ‘fro for a short period of time. when i find the pictures i will post them.

but he didnt wear his hair a certain way to bow to popular convention or to appease a certain racial group, he did it because either he wanted it, or because he thought it could score him more chicks. to hell with malcom x or being called a sellout.

sammy was a tap dancing black jew who hung with tricky dick.

“sellout” only begins the list of slurs that other blacks would hurl at him and he didnt give a damn.

and now you’ve heard the best of the story.

p.s. his relationship with nixon earned him the interesting opportunity to be the first Black to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. he took it.