ENTERPRISE -- Leon Atkins has spent more than five decades working as a barber, providing his customers with a place for style and socialization.
Atkins said that barbershops play a big role in black communities, providing an important part of the business and social base.
“People love the barbershop, they love to come in and talk about what’s going on, what happened over the weekend,” he said.
For Atkins, the barbershop gave him an important opportunity. He said becoming a barber was his ticket out of working at a sawmill when he came of age in the late 1950s.
“I finished high school and couldn’t find a job. My daddy told me to get to doing something,” he said. “I went to the barbershop and decided that I wanted to be a barber.”
Atkins went to a barber school in Little Rock, Ark., at about the same time clashes over integration were beginning to happen. Atkins said most of his time was taken up with learning the barber trade.
“I was so fast that my instructor told me ‘you have to learn to cut first, then put on the speed,’” he said.
After completing barber school, Atkins went to work as a barber, eventually joining the Army and working as a military barber.
“Everywhere I went, I ran a barbershop and I cut everybody’s hair in the Army,” he said.
Atkins’ clientele was less diverse when he left the Army and went into business on his own, but as racial attitudes changed, more clients of other races began coming to him for haircuts.
Today, Atkins runs a barbershop in Enterprise in a spot he’s occupied for 10 years. He said longer hairstyles and a sour economy have slowed down his business, but many customers are staying loyal because he’s one of few barbers who still uses razors instead of electric clippers.
When he’s not cutting hair, Atkins performs music under the name of Lil’ Jimmy Reed. Atkins said he prefers music to barbering, but still enjoys his regular gig cutting hair.
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