“All this because of my hair?” In the 1700s, the “Negro Act” made it illegal for Black people to “dress above their condition.” In 2024 Black Americans remain stigmatized for not imitating the grooming habits that match white, European beauty values. Darryl George is a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Chambers County. Every school day since August he has suffered the punishment of forced segregation from his peers in in-school suspension for the depravity of sporting his hair in well-groomed, painstakingly pinned-up locs. He will remain in isolation indefinitely since the March 22nd trial where the white State District Judge Chap Cain III brazenly declared the school’s policy “does not prohibit nor does it discriminate against male students who wear braids, locs, or twists,” but that Mr. George must cut his to regain classroom attendance privileges.
“It feels lonely,” Mr. George said. “When you’re only stuck in one room for a whole semester it makes you feel some type of way. You see everyone else walking around talking and laughing, and you can’t do that.” The school district forbids males from wearing hair that extends beyond eyebrows, earlobes, or collars even when it’s always gathered on top of their head, even for religious reasons. This contradicts the Texas CROWN Act law that strictly prohibits discrimination on the basis of hair styles associated with race. Protective styles expressly include locks, braids, and twists. Lawyers representing Barbers Hill I.S.D. claimed lawmakers should have included specific language about hair length if they expected the CROWN law to cover it. Allie Booker, representing Darryl George, was forced to state the obvious to the oblivious judge: protected styles, including braids and locks are only possible with long hair. “You can’t make braids with a crew cut. You can’t lock anything that isn’t long,” she tried to explain. Her efforts were repeatedly disrespected and interrupted by the opposing counsel as “irrelevant.”
The primary author of the CROWN Act, Texas Rep. Rhetta Andrews Bowers recognizes that Darrell George’s education is being unlawfully withheld. “We see your efforts to break down this young Black man, and we will not allow it.” She added that if she and her team have to go back to the drawing board to create a clearer law, they will. State Rep. Ron Reynolds says he will file a new crown act including hair length. Civil rights activist Candice Matthews knows Barbers Hill ISD “wanted to pick a sacrificial lamb in order for them to show that ‘We don’t give a damn about your bill, and your law.’”
