Black Box Barber Shop

Photos and text by Dalton Tumblin

Located in the heart of Columbia, South Carolina’s Waverly area, the Black Box Barber Shop is an important part of the neighborhood’s culture. From the outside, it may look like an ordinary building, but inside it is full of liveliness. It is known to be a central spot for the people in this community, who pass through all day every day to get a hair cut, just hang out, or both. Most of the time, there is nowhere to sit and the room is full of people standing around shooting the bull with one another. The building is full of laughter, friendly debates over sports, conversation, drama, and town gossip. Waverly is a close knit community, and the Black Box Barber Shop is the place to be to experience its culture.

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The Black Box Barber Shop was opened by Reagan Smith almost 25 years ago. He and his wife cut hair together and wanted to open up a place where everyone was welcome to get a haircut. He dreamed of a place for his community to be able to get the haircut they wanted in a place where they felt loved and comfortable. So they opened up the shop and named it the Black Box Barber Shop. The name came from a popular hairstyle in the Africa-American community back in the early 1980’s called the “box” haircut. Reagan Smith still cuts hair at his barber shop to this day, and has countless customers from when he started 25 years ago. Reagan also has two other barbers working in his shop, Derick and Lamont. Derick has been at the Black Box Barber Shop for 15 years while Lamont is still in his first year at this barber shop.

This barber shop is truly one big happy family of people, welcoming hospitality and friendliness. Reagan Smith says that he isn’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon, and that the Black Box Barber Shop will live on for a long time to come.     


Dalton Tumblin

I am a senior majoring in Visual Communications. I first fell in love with photography early on in college. I am a tournament fisherman and I started to take photos while on 3-day tournament trips to document what I was doing. I haven’t stopped since and I slowly realized that outdoor photo and video is something I want to do for the rest of my life. Now I work with professional fisherman, making their promo videos and doing photo shoots for their social media and sponsors. As an outdoors guy, I also love doing wildlife photography and photo story telling of different things such as hunting, hiking, and camping trips.