Black Hairstyles Need Protection

In most U.S. states, employers and schools are allowed to discriminate against box braids, locs, and other traditional styles. A coalition of activists and legislators has started to change that.

- By Patrice Peck

Four years ago, when Faith Fennidy was 10, her mother called her down to the living room to watch something that seemed crazy. On TV was a report about Deanna and Mya Cook, 15-year-old twin sisters in Massachusetts whose school had given them detention, threatened them with suspension, and banned them from track meets, Latin club, and the prom—all for braiding their hair. The twins were wearing the simple box braids ubiquitous among generations of Black women and girls, Fennidy included. Often done using extensions, they’re a staple Black hairstyle, because they help protect hair from damage as it grows and are relatively easy to maintain. The sisters’ charter school said it had punished the girls because its policies on student hair and makeup forbid extensions.

Faith recalls watching the news report in a daze, shocked that hair like hers could lead to such punishment. At the time, the story made the Cooks’ charter school in Malden, Mass., sound very far away from her Catholic elementary school in Terrytown, La. “I don’t think I would have ever believed that it would have happened to me,” she says.

But a year later, it did. Faith’s school amended its dress code to ban hair extensions in similarly neutral-sounding terms, and soon she was sent home for the day for violating the policy. A clip of her leaving school in tears went viral, and a still from the video appeared in the New York Times. “I was just so upset in that moment,” she recalls. She transferred schools.