Ketanji Brown Jackson and the Politics of Black Hair

On Thursday, Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. “Natural black hair,” as Tiya Miles, the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, wrote for the New York Times, in 2018, about the recent resurgence of natural Black hairstyles, “is again a sign of political intention, visually cuing a culture of resistance that asserts the value of difference, of conviction in the face of adversity, of the intrinsic worth of all human beings.” But decades later, this battle for the right to be Black and wear our hair the way it naturally grows out of our head is still being waged. For years, the military’s grooming codes banned or severely limited the wearing of “hairstyles like cornrows, braids, twists and dreadlocks”—all hairstyles that are overwhelmingly worn by Black women. “While the Army certainly isn’t the first to impose these kinds of prohibitions,” wrote Ayana Byrd and Lori L. Tharps, the authors of “Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America,” in an op-ed about the police for the New York Times, “ it may be the most egregious example, considering that the 26,000 black women affected by AR 670-1 are willing to die for their country.” The Army has since amended its policy. “And with it, black hair in its natural state of sublime uprightness has returned as a symbol of political consciousness and visionary imagining.” As Jackson takes her seat, we can add the Supreme Court to that list.