Like a lot of little Black girls, I spent Saturdays lying on the kitchen counter while my mother or grandmother washed my hair in the sink. Motown blasted through the stereo of our Detroit home. It was a sacred ritual, especially when my girl cousins joined too. It would take hours to shampoo, condition, and moisturize our curls, but it never felt like a chore.
Getting pampered by the women in my family was a tradition my mom and grandmother took very seriously. After they washed our curls, they’d navigate narrow basement steps and warm up already dry towels in the dryer. Then, as they sat in chairs, we’d grab a space on the floor in between their legs, and they’d pat—never rub—our hair until it was free from drips. While my grandmother detangled our hair, she would talk about picking cotton in Tennessee as a child. As she rebraided it, she would tell us we were beautiful and intelligent. This is how I fell in love with my hair.
Those cherished Saturday rituals were distant childhood memories when I found myself at William P. Hobby prison in Marlin, Texas, in 2010 at age 38. After six months in prison, I was eligible to get my hair done for the first time. That summer, the temperatures were in the triple digits, so after the incarcerated women working at the hair salon washed and trimmed my ends, I wanted to let my hair air-dry. If I had to be in prison, at least it could blow freely in the breeze.
On the walk back to my dorm, a guard brought me back down to earth. To him, my freshly washed Afro “looked like I’d stuck my hand in an electric socket.” He gave me a written reprimand—also known as a disciplinary—for having an “extreme hairstyle.”
What’s an “extreme hairstyle”? It depends. And that’s the point. According to the Texas Offender Orientation Handbook:
–Female offenders shall not have extreme hairstyles.
–No mohawks “tailed” haircuts or shaved/partially shaved heads shall be allowed.
–Female offenders may wear braids in accordance with unit policy.
This is what it’s like to have Black hair in prison. Across America, people were outraged over stories of kids suspended from school for wearing dreadlocks and Black women sent home from work or denied employment because of policies against protective hairstyles like locs, twists, and braids. So in more than 20 states including Texas, where I’m incarcerated, lawmakers passed the CROWN Act. Now, it’s illegal to discriminate based on someone’s hairstyle or hair texture at school or their job.
It was a major victory. But while many American institutions are recognizing the harm that comes from policing Black hair, at Dr. Lane Murray Unit, where I’m now incarcerated (and at most other prisons), we can still get in trouble for how we wear our hair. This is especially true when it’s in protective styles that help it grow and prevent it from breaking or becoming damaged.
The rules around how we style our hair aren’t just unfair. In some cases, they can also be life-threatening. Just last month, an Environmental Working Group analysis found that most personal care items marketed to Black women contain hazardous chemicals. Numerous studies have linked hair straighteners to higher rates of breast and uterine cancer. Nearly 10,000 people have filed lawsuits against these manufacturers, but Black people in prison have largely been left out of these claims. Even worse, we’re still encouraged to straighten our hair. It’s even a requirement for some jobs here.
Although Afros aren’t specifically prohibited in Texas prisons, the guard thought mine was “extreme” and that was enough to write me up. I was new to prison and its rules, so I wasn’t punished further. But if it happened again, he warned, I could lose my phone, commissary, or visitation privileges for up to 45 days. Since then, I’ve been lucky—I haven’t received any other disciplinary actions because of my hair. But other people who are repeatedly punished for their hairstyles can be denied parole because of “poor Institutional adjustment.” The flawed logic here? If you can’t abide by the rules in prison, then you won’t abide by society's rules. Never mind the fact that rules are stricter here than in society…and the punishments are harsher.
For transgender people, the regulations are even more oppressive because they also limit gender expression. Even though Lisa Jackson is a transgender man, he is incarcerated in a women’s prison. Lisa is mixed race and when he first entered in 2014, the prison made him cut off his ducktail and shave his facial hair and ordered him to stop cutting his hair short. “I didn’t feel like myself,” he says.
When 33-year-old Shaun Bell was growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana, his strict Pentecostal grandmother “told me not to alter my hair. God made me and I’m perfect the way I am,” he says.
Today, Shuan is a transgender man incarcerated in a women’s prison and likes to wear his hair in a Caesar cut. He says he’s been sent to solitary “countless times” for trivial reasons and thinks about a dozen of these times it was because of his hair. Like many of us, he often ends up waiting for hours or days in solitary with no official disciplinary infraction. Twice, however, he received a written infraction because his short hair was an “extreme hairstyle.”
He’s also received “razor restriction,” meaning he can’t have a razor to shave with. When I ask Shaun how that feels, he sighs. “I wanna go home so I gotta be who they say, not who I really am.”
One afternoon, while Shaun and I were talking in the dayroom, he stopped and pointed to a table of our white friends playing dominoes.
“Look, they got some of their hair shaved and mohawks, but they don’t ever get in trouble unless they wear braids or cornrows,” he said.
I’ve seen this play out firsthand. It shows just how absurd enforcement of these rules can be. Delicia Carmichael has thick curly hair. Before the 22-year-old was incarcerated, she’d wear it straightened, down and curly, or in box braids. Now, at Lane Murray, she finds ways to style it in order to express herself. She says she loves wearing “a big messy bun with stray curls falling” or two French braids. “Sometimes, I wear two Mickey Mouse buns and with all these hairstyles, I lay down my baby hairs in different swoops and swirls,” she says.
One day, when her hair was in tiny individual braids called plaits, a guard stopped her. “That hairstyle is not for you,” he said. He thought Delicia was white and white prisoners weren’t allowed to wear their hair in plaits.
But though Carmichael is sometimes assumed to be white, she strongly identifies as Black. “I’m Black!” Carmichael yelled in response. “Check my record!” The sergeant handcuffed her and frog-marched her toward the administrative building. It wasn’t until another guard confirmed that Delicia was, in fact, African American, that he removed the cuffs. Again, someone else was defining—and policing—our Blackness.
Incarcerated Black women, who are already more likely to face violence from officers, must also go to extreme and uncomfortable measures to follow the rules without using those toxic products that, according to that growing number of studies, can make us sick. Some use state-issued soap to lather their hair and then smooth and straighten it into a bun with broken pocket combs. It itches but works—until you’re caught in the rain and soapy water runs into your eyes.
“Due to the harsh water, a lot of times, inmates end up with dermatitis, extremely dry hair, and hair loss that leads to sores that can become infected,” says Charlotte Redmond, who is incarcerated at Lane Murray and also frustrated that the commissary only offers hair grease and not oil. “Grease flares up the dermatitis and makes dandruff worse. Some inmates have to shave their heads to prevent infections.” Dermatologists recommend gentle, sulfate-free shampoos and deep conditioners or natural oils for Black hair. There are no shampoos or conditioners for wavy or curly hair for sale at the commissary. The ones they do have can damage coily and kinky hair. Even women whose families provide some financial support often end up mixing Vaseline with one of the few available conditioners. It’s a painful mess. Pitying us, African American staff sometimes smuggle in contraband hair products including hair wax, edge control, sulfate-free shampoos, and hair conditioning puddings.
While Shaun and I shared nachos in the dayroom, a group of church volunteers arrived to distribute hygiene bags. For the first time since I’ve been incarcerated, there were bags with Cantu shampoo and conditioner. Cantu, which has a Kente cloth on the label, is intended for natural curls, coils, and wavy hair. But the Cantu wasn’t distributed to Black people specifically. Some of the white and Latina folks willingly traded their Cantu for White Rain or VO5 to those of us with Black hair, while others saw an opportunity and began charging outrageous sums of money for the coveted products. Arguments turned into fights and the warden ordered a 23:59 (an in-cell lockdown that’s deliberately one minute short of 24 hours long, because 24-hour lockdowns are forbidden).
These are the ripple effects of the prison’s indifference to Black hair—and Black people. In our culture, hair has always been more than just aesthetics. It holds generational wisdom and brings a sense of identity and pride. I still remember how it felt to be a little girl in her grandmother’s kitchen having her hair styled by people who loved her. Thanks to her, I love my hair. I may not have the freedom to style it how I choose, but no prison handbook, overzealous guard, or dehumanizing corrections system can take that away from me.
