Scoville, 'curley' for the hair of Black men, prior to the 1920's, meant the same as 'nappy' in current language.
McGrath is correct.
As I posted, nappy did not appear in print with regard to hair until after the 1920's. Kinky was the term long used used by Whites, but it was and is considered derogatory by most African-Americans.

Azizi, the African-American who has contributed much to Mudcat, says in a post way up above: "I'm nappy and I'm proud." If all descriptive words are thrown out, how would one describe a person? Some of this language-filtering is downright silly.

Of course it can be used in derogatory ways, and Azizi pointed out that there is no 'consensus.' She also pointed out that it also depends on 'who's talking.'

I wonder what the term(s) is(are) in South Africa and elsewhere (I realized as I was typing that, with eleven official linguistic groups in S. Af., that there must be much variation in hair).