by Nahlah Abdur-Rahman
August 18, 2025
Tyrone’s Barber & Magnificence Salon initially opened to serve Black servicemen from the close by Air Pressure base.
A Black-owned barbershop and sweetness salon in Biloxi, Mississippi, has a brand new historic marker exterior its doorways.
Tyrone’s Barber & Magnificence Salon has stood within the southern metropolis for the reason that early Nineteen Sixties. It initially opened as a approach to serve Black servicemen on the close by Keesler Air Pressure Base. Now, residents and vacationers to Biloxi will perceive its significance on Important Avenue with the historic marker. The couple unveiled the marker on social media Aug. 16.
The store’s proprietor, Tyrone Burton, started reducing hair as a young person. He labored with scissors and clippers in hand to assist Black males in the neighborhood keep groomed. The salon grew to become a staple in East Biloxi’s historic Black enterprise district. This new marker will now ceaselessly rejoice the store’s historical past and legacy within the city.
“It’s a magnificence to reside to see it as a result of so many instances, so many issues occurred,” shared Burton to WLOX.
The barber store stays open to at the present time, with long-time residents nonetheless coming in for a recent haircut. Burton nonetheless cuts hair, with the neighborhood figuring out him and his store as an area for change and togetherness.
“I’ve lived carrying the torch and nonetheless carrying the torch, and I’ve loved the stroll with the folks,” he added.
The barber store has held many roles throughout its decades-long existence. Throughout the Civil Rights Motion, it grew to become a protected haven and an important assembly floor for neighborhood activists. The salon as soon as helped Black folks with voter registration and later navigated modifications from desegregation to Hurricane Katrina.
“Black and white couldn’t depart the bottom in the identical cab, and I used to be seeing these modifications,” recalled Burton.
Amid the pure catastrophe, which severely broken the town, Burton and his spouse, Vera, opted to remain and rebuild, persevering with to serve their neighborhood as a hair-cutting duo that catered to all folks’s haircare wants.
“I’m very pleased with him,” shared Vera. “So pleased with him. He deserves each little bit of it. His legacy will simply proceed on.”
The popularity of the barber store’s place in Biloxi prolonged even additional. In Could, part of Important Avenue exterior the store was renamed to “Tyrone Burton Method.” Tyrone’s significance to the folks of Biloxi stays felt, with hair appointments feeling extra like a household reunion.
“You possibly can go right into a enterprise and simply be a buyer, however when you may go into it and really feel fellowship as a household? That’s what you are feeling right here while you come to Tyrone,” defined a patron and buddy, Bob Gibson. It’s superior that the town would take time and acknowledge the work and the affect that he’s had on his neighborhood.”
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