I first ran into these in the early 1960s when I was working in Arlington, VA. There were several gay black men who worked at this hospital, and they wore do rags to and from work because of their (I assume) pomaded hair. Jimmy explained to this poor uneducated white boy that these sort of skull caps kept their hair from picking up dirt while riding the bus back and fortth to work and kept the moisture in the hair stuff working. Each of them would spend four or five minutes carefully reshaping their hair after taking off the do rag.

I always assumed that the do was short for hairdo.


TEd