Hazel Moore, Whitehaven's unofficial mayor, anchors community
Hazel's Hair Fashions doesn't have the bustle it did before COVID-19 struck Memphis.
The beauty shop takes customers by appointment only, with some cosmetologists working evenings and some mornings so they can keep customers spaced far apart.
Before, people in Whitehaven used to swing by to wave at owner Hazel Moore through the large windows at the front of the beauty parlor or stick their head in the front door to say “hi.”
Members of the community can't open the front door for a social call anymore, Moore said, and she's not doing hair herself right now, but that hasn't stopped Whitehaven's unofficial mayor from working to encourage her neighbors and uplift Whitehaven during the pandemic.
“They're wishing for tomorrow to come,” Moore said. “When that day comes, my door will be wide open to continue to be a voice for this community.”
Today, Moore invites guests into her salon with a handheld thermometer, a burst of energy and an unyielding passion for her community.
She owned two salons, one downtown and one in Westwood, before opening the one in Whitehaven in the 1980s. And in Whitehaven, she's stayed.
An anchor of the community
Beauticians have a great deal of influence in a neighborhood, Moore said, and it's from that position that she's built her influence in Whitehaven and beyond.
But that's a position that's been challenged as COVID-19 closed barbershops and salons first temporarily and then, for some, permanently. For many clients, a salon wasn't just a place to get your hair done, but also a place to garner information and to find community.
“Nobody knows about a neighborhood better than some of us beauticians,” Moore said. “We know it — people tell it to us. It's up to us to put the information out there.”
Former Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. has known Moore for about 30 years. As mayor, if he wanted to get the word out about a project but didn't have the money for a public relations campaign, he'd send word to her beauty shop, he said.
“Ms. Hazel Moore is the epitome of this, the cosmetologists and the barbers, they are our counseling shops, they are our news stations, they serve so much to anchor the community,” Wharton said. “Whitehaven has ebbed and flowed, but there has always been an anchor and that's Hazel Moore.”
Moore isn't just paying attention to how the pandemic has influenced her own shop. In her characteristic fashion, she's providing advice to beauty and barber shops across the neighborhood, distributing literature on COVID-19 precautions and keeping track of those who've closed their shops.
Some are making just enough money to pay their bills. Others can't cover the cost of rent, money owed for furniture and loans for cosmetology school, she said, forcing them to take other jobs.
“We're hoping that masks help solve the problems and all the things we're cutting back on, doing without, that we can look and see better days to come,” Moore said. “I'm talking to them and trying to encourage them to hang on in there.”
Mayor of Whitehaven
When Moore opened her beauty parlor in Whitehaven, the community embraced her, she said. And she's tried to give back.
And soon — to her surprise — they started to call her “mayor.”
“I said oh god, I don't want to be that,” Moore said. “They said well you are, because you're our voice. That's why they call me that particular name is because of that. When you can do something to help somebody else, you don't mind whatever it takes.”
The nickname “mayor” originated with former Shelby County General Sessions Court Clerk Ed Stanton Jr., who said he first dubbed Moore mayor of Whitehaven after she played a role in getting the community a new branch library.
“She had her hands in everything that was positive and visible in Whitehaven. I just said that she was a person with a lot of energy and vision,” Stanton said. “Her heart is for helping people, particularly people in Whitehaven. When I dubbed her that, everybody just started calling her that and we still call her that.”
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said when he's in the same room as Moore he likes to joke that “the mayor of Whitehaven gave (him) permission to enter into her territory.”
“She's just a wonderful, giving, caring dynamo,” Strickland said. “She cares so much about Memphis, all of Memphis, but particularly Whitehaven. She has her finger on the pulse of what's going on in Whitehaven.”
The nickname of “mayor” has stuck as Moore has continued working in the community. She founded the Academy of Youth Empowerment, organized the Whitehaven Christmas Parade and started a community health fair where students and their parents can get health screenings and receive free school supplies.
Tajuan Stout Mitchell, a former City Councilmember whose district included Whitehaven, said Moore was a “catalyst for change” in the district.
And, that change has spread beyond Whitehaven. Today, the health fair takes place at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church and draws families from across the city.
“There would be no Christmas parade without her,” Stout Mitchell said. “She was the founder of the biggest health fair in Memphis, where doctors and hospitals would just really bring their staff and equipment out to the community for a full weekend and do health screenings not only for children but for adults. She's been a force to be reckoned with.”
And Moore hasn't stopped.
In an interview Monday in her quiet beauty shop, Moore talked about her ideas for Whitehaven's future, ideas based on years of listening to others.
The community needs more businesses, she says — not dollar stores and phone stores, but good retail stores and healthy restaurants. It needs movie theaters like it used to have, places for children to play and to celebrate birthday parties. They need attractions to keep the tourists who visit Graceland spending their money in Whitehaven.
“What makes a community is what we can do and how we can work together,” Moore said.
Moore dreamed of making a change
Moore always knew she wanted to be a leader — and also knew, as a little girl, that she wanted to be a cosmetologist.
She lost her mother at eight years old, Moore said, and was raised by her grandmother and great grandmother.
She went to church every Sunday and came out “with the truths I needed for life,” Moore said.
“I walked behind some great people,” Moore said. “That was my dream, to be a leader, that was my dream to make a change in this profession.”
And she's been a leader in the beauty profession, serving with the Tennessee Board of Hairdressers Association, the Memphis Beauticians Association and other boards.
Especially important to Moore is her work with the next generation of leaders (whether leaders in the beauty profession or elsewhere).
“So many children have grown up in this salon and went up into the world,” Moore said. “We taught them to be leaders and future leaders of tomorrow.”
Moore is the type of person who is “selfless,” said Harold Collins, executive director of the Shelby County Office of Reentry and a former Memphis City Councilman whose district included Whitehaven.
“She gives tirelessly of herself to the community,” Collins said. “She's always watching out for the Whitehaven community more so than some of us elected officials. She's always thinking about how the area and community can be better and what she can do to make that happen.”
But Moore says she does gain from the work she does. There's the closeness to community: The hugs she's given by the young leaders she had an impact on as they grew up visiting her beauty parlor with their mothers or attending her Academy of Youth Empowerment, hugs she's looking forward to once COVID-19 restrictions lift.
The young leaders are proud of their accomplishments and eager to do more, she said. When she puts on an event today, she hardly has to worry about anything. She sits back and the young leaders do the work, she said.
“They are eager to do something,” Moore said. “People are eager, just give ‘em a chance. Give them the necessary tools and they take their wings and fly away with it.”
Katherine Burgess covers county government and religion. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com, 901-529-2799 or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.