Crowns Held High At Black Hair Care Event

ByLucy Gellman

State Rep. Robyn Porter looked into sixyear-old Sienna’s wide eyes, studying the face of one of her youngest constituents. She paused for just a moment, letting the warmth of the room around her sink in. Two seats away, Sienna’s mom, Alisha Crutchfield, listened to every word.

“You are a princess, ok?” Porter said. Applause filled the room. “You’re perfect.”

That exchange came out of the LAB at ConnCORP last Sunday afternoon during “How Do You Wear and Care for Your Crown,” a community conversation celebrating and centering Black hair. For three hours, attendees listened, gathered advice, and told some of their stories at the Hamden space.

It was moderated by Krystal Harris, who founded Free Your Scalp five years ago. Speakers included Blush Beauty and Wellness Founder Winter Carson, Nia Clemons of Capture, barber Rachel “Roqkandy” Graziano, filmmaker Lydia Douglas, and Sharon Joy Salon Owner Joy Brown and stylists Ranada Morrison and Mona Davis.

Many times throughout the afternoon, it doubled as a tribute to the late Sharon Clemons, a beloved community champion and co-owner of Sharon Joy Salon, who passed away in November 2020 of Covid-19. In the months and years since her death, her family has established both an educational fund to support Black women and a “Community Cultivator” award in her honor.

Her husband, ConnCORP CEO and President Erik Clemons, thanked attendees for keeping her memory alive. Multiple times, Brown also remembered her sister fondly, and brought her spirit into the room.

“It’s Your Crown. And It Is Sacred.”

Porter, who spearheaded Connecticut C.R.O.W.N. Act legislation in 2021, started the afternoon by talking about her own path to advocacy—and the personal loc journey that has followed. At the time that it passed two years ago, Connecticut was the eighth state to adopt the C.R.O.W.N. Act. Now, the act has passed in 18 states. Her own excitement around the bill began a year before the Covid-19 pandemic upended the world as she knew it. In 2019, Porter saw a YouTube video of high school wrestler Andrew Johnson, who was forced to cut his locs before competing in a match. The longer Porter watched, the more incensed she became. From her time as a mother, a daughter, and a community member, she knew the love and labor that went into that hair.

“I sat there and watched as a group of white people, and a white woman in particular with a pair of scissors in her hand, stepped to him, got around him, and she commenced to just—I mean, no care at all,” she said. A collective, sharp inhale filled the room. “Just cuttin’ his locs off.”

It sparked her interest in bringing the C.R.O.W.N. Act, a national movement that stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair, to Connecticut. In 2019, Porter was still the chair she came home and told Porter that her classmates had touched her hair, asking questions about its texture that she didn’t want to be answering. She was uncomfortable in class, she said; begged Porter to let her get a perm.

As a mother, Porter said, it was painful to hear the discomfort in her voice— discomfort that her non-Black classmates were creating. For years, the two struggled through debates around perms, chemical relaxers, and different protective styles. It wasn’t until high school that her daughter embraced her natural hair.

"To God be the glory," Porter added.

As a Black woman, Porter has also lived through hair discrimination herself, including in her work at the State Capitol. When she began working as a state representative nine years ago, she said, her white colleagues complained that she changed up her hair too much. They insisted that people wouldn’t recognize her if she didn’t wear a single, consistent style. Porter doubted it.

“I’m like, ‘Really?!’” she recalled to laughs Sunday. “I don’t know about you, but Black folks, we know each other when we show up. It’s just who we are, it’s cultural. So that struck a chord.”

In early 2020, she and State Sen. Julie Kushner proposed the legislation, only to have its first attempt stymied by Covid-19. When she brought it back the next year, hundreds of women gave testimony, even during a virtual session. When it came to the state House and Senate, legislators spoke about the discrimination they had experienced.

“This was the first bill that I passed out of my committee,” Porter said to cheers and applause. “And I am proud to say that it was passed with bipartisan support, which is really important.”

For some of her white colleagues and non-Black colleagues of color, it represented the first time they had heard about hair discrimination in places of employment, job interviews, classrooms, playing fields, and extracurricular activities. She said she was heartened to hear colleagues on both sides of the political aisle say that they were listening and learning. “Not everyone,” she added—but many of them. She asked for a show of hands, counting the number of women who faced hair discrimination before the law passed. A dozen hands went up. When she asked for a count for after the law passed, only one hand went up. Porter gave out the number for the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO), and urged her to take action.

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As she built momentum around the bill, she thought of her daughter, who was the first Black student in her elementary school class in Wallingford. As a child,

“This is about creating liberating spaces,” she said as Alisha Crutchfield and her six-year-old daughter, Sienna, came in and took a seat close to Porter. “We talk about safe spaces, but what about our liberation? What about our children

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