Hair! How I Grew It

On today’s show I interview Dominique Kizer. She is a linkage coordinator at her alma mater Shaw High School. My cousin and other folks that I know graduated from there. The Shaw High School marching band is legendary. What does a Linkage Coordinator do?

On today’s show I interview Lori Danley. Lori is a project manager in Washington, D.C. She is also the cousin of past Hair! How I Grew It guest Sylvia Danley-Smith. When one of my podcast guests fell through, Sylvia immediately recommended her cousin because Lori makes luxury shampoo bars. Luxury because they’re made with all natural ingredients. No chemicals or detergents that are typically found in commercial brands. More on that later in the show.

Born in St. Petersburg, Florida, the project manager left the Sunshine State when she was about 8 years old and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. She finished school there at 13 and was thrust into adulthood. More on that later in the show.

Lori first embraced her natural in 1997. The only child went back to the creamy crack six years later and kept her straight hair until 2012 when she embraced her natural again. She’s been natural ever since.

I asked Lori to describe her fine hair texture.

On today’s show, I interview Kamarah Green. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Kamarah now lives in Washington, D.C. She is a multimedia artist. I asked her to explain what that means.

On today’s show, I interview attorney, author, activist and radio host Lurie Daniel Favors. Lurie is the Executive Director at the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College.

In January 2013, she self-published Afro State of Mind: Memories of a Nappy Headed Black Girl to rave reviews. The classic is currently out of print. Lurie plans to release it again this year to celebrate the book’s 10th anniversary. More on that later in the show.

I discovered Lurie years ago when she was a contributor on The Karen Hunter Show, which airs on Sirius XM’s Urban View. Now, this multi-talent has her own hosting gig on the same channel. The Lurie Daniel Favors Show airs live every weekday from 10 a.m. to noon Eastern Standard Time. It focuses on the messy intersections of race, gender, culture, identity, politics and the law. I am a big fan, so when I heard that my Delta Soror and past Hair! How I Grew It guest Mercy Chikowore knew Lurie, I immediately asked Mercy to introduce us. She did. Lurie said yes to being on Hair! How I Grew It, and I am so grateful.

Lurie is a sisterlocks newbie. She got them last year. Before that, she rocked a loose natural for nearly 25 years. Her thoughts on her hair texture have evolved.

On today’s show, I interview Sylvia Danley-Smith. Sylvia is living her best natural hair life, and she’s showing it off as a content creator and social media influencer. Her target group—women over 40.

On today’s show, I interview my Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Sister Nichelle Smith. Nichelle is the enterprise editor for racism and history at USA TODAY. Saying Nichelle and enterprise in the same sentence makes me think of Star Trek and the actor, who portrayed Lieutenant Uhura in the original series. When I brought that to the Indiana native’s attention, she said she was named after actor Nichelle Nichols.

On today’s show, I interview St. Clair Detrick-Jules. She’s a photojournalist in Washington, D. C., her hometown. St. Clair’s love letter to her younger sister Khloe is called My Beautiful Black Hair: 101 Natural Hair Stories from the Sisterhood. More on that later in the show. First, let’s dissect St. Clair’s hair journey.

On today’s show, I interview Mercy Chikowore. Mercy is a publicist in the Washington, D.C. metro area. She is also my Delta Sigma Theta Sorority sister.

I always start my Hair! How I Grew It interviews with, “Where were you born and raised?” While all the answers have been interesting, Mercy’s was the first to take my breath away.

On today’s show, I interview Bernita Cooper. Bernita is the CEO and Founder of Bernita Cooper Communications. She helps her clients alleviate the stress of creating content that informs, educates and tells a story.

Bernita was born and raised in Hemingway, South Carolina, which is a small town located about two hours from Columbia. Fun fact, Sylvia Woods, the woman who founded the famous soul food restaurant Sylvia’s in Harlem, was from Hemingway.

Bernita has sported a natural for about 15 years, but she did take a natural break in college. More on that later in the show.

On today’s show, I interview my Divine 9 sister, Ashley Rowe. Ashley is a licensed natural hair care specialist and instructor. She is a SisterlocksTM brand ambassador and an R Certified consultant. R Certified means she’s been trained to teach people how to maintain their own sisterlocks. Ashley is also an entrepreneur. She owns Naturally Rowe LLC and co-owns Twist’d Up and Loc’d Down Boutique.

I met Ashley last year when I was looking for a natural hair care specialist to team up with for my COVID-19 Natural Hair 9-1-1 LIVE clinic on Zoom. I wanted to hold the virtual event because I knew sistahs couldn’t get to salons, and many of them desperately needed help maintaining their naturals on their own. Past Hair! How I Grew It Guest, Stefanie Graddic, who is also my stepsister, recommended Ashley for the clinic. Ashley is Stefanie’s Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority line sister.

The clinic was a success. Ashley shared a lot of good information. Her mist water bottle suggestion changed my life. She told me to mist my hair with water then detangle it with a comb before I washed it. I was detangling my very dense coily Afro after I applied conditioner, which took forever. I started our conversation with gratitude.

Hair! How I Grew It has been named one of the top 25 natural hair podcasts on the web by Feedspot. Check out the rankings at https://blog.feedspot.com/natural_hair_podcasts/. 

On today’s show, I interview Dr. Eddith Dashiell. In May, she became the Director of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. Dr. Dashiell is the first woman and the first African American to hold the position. I met her in the early 1990s when I was a journalism student at OU. She was one of my favorite professors.

About a decade after I graduated, she embraced her natural because OU, a predominantly white campus in rural Athens, Ohio, has never had much black hair care support.

On today's show, I interview my beautiful and talented cousin, Tanikka Charraé.

I wanted Tanikka to be a part of Hair! How I Grew It’s first season, but she couldn’t because before COVID, she was traveling around the world singing backup for Lauryn Hill. She’s been doing that for nearly 11 years.

I’m so proud of Tanikka. The first time I saw her on one of the late-night shows with Ms. Hill, I cheesed so hard, my cheeks hurt. Now, grounded like most us, Tanikka made time to share her journey to natural hair. She’s been rocking hers for about 12 years.

I know I’ve mentioned Ms. Hill a few times already, but I assure you, this is not a show about her. This is about Tanikka Charraé, but I started the interview talking about the Grammy-award winning artist because of her natural vibe. I still remember Ms. Hill’s glorious locs from back in the day, and those iconic lyrics from her song Doo Woop. "Look at where you be in, hair weaves like Europeans." She’s calling sistahs out. So, I asked Tanikka what impact has being around that energy had on her natural hair life.

On today’s show, I interview my family doctor, Sabine Paul-Yee. She’s a CentraState physician, who embraced her natural six years ago. Dr. Paul-Yee is the best doctor I’ve ever had. Her bedside manner is impeccable, and she always makes me feel like my health really matters, so of course I had to interview her because on this show, black hair matters.

On today’s show, I interview LaWanda Toney. LaWanda is a Communications Director for a nonprofit based in the Washington, D.C. metro area. A South Carolina native, she is also a graduate of Howard University. We spoke less than 24-hours after former Vice President Joe Biden announced he picked Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Harris is also a Bison, so of course, I had to get LaWanda’s thoughts on her HU sister making history.

On today’s show, I interview Comedienne and Musician Rita Brent. Rita embraced her natural five years ago. Her viral videos are the humor we need during this unprecedented time. The Mississippi native’s Quarantine Shuffle features Rita dancing with her family while she sings about washing hands, staying indoors and other precautions we should take to protect ourselves from COVID-19.

Rita’s A Prayer for Trump, which has more than one million views on Facebook, is laugh out loud political commentary. Here’s an excerpt.

You know the saying, don’t judge a book by its cover? Well, it applies to today’s guest, Ashley Moore. A Georgia peach, who now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, Ashley is a Cardiac Clinical Specialist with one of the top medical device companies in the world. Her job is to help electrophysiologists implant cardiac devices. She’s also a natural hair enthusiast, lifestyle blogger and my Delta Sigma Theta Sorority sister.

Looking at Ashley, you’d never guess this beautiful, bubbly and outgoing chocolate sistah, who models part time, lost her mother to domestic violence. Ashley was just 12 at the time. Later in the show, she talks candidly about how that tragedy devastated her hair life.

First, we talk hair texture. Hers is soft with wavy curls, and a little kinky in the back. Living in a dry climate, Ashley doesn’t have to worry about hair shrinkage.

Normally, I introduce my guest, but today, I’m letting my guest introduce herself because quite frankly, she does it a hell of a lot better than I would.

On today’s show, I interview Kamara Douglas. The natural hair discrimination she experienced on a job helped change the law in Cincinnati, Ohio. Now, Cincy is the second U.S. city to ban natural hair discrimination at work. New York is the first.

Even though I’d never met Kamara, I knew in my gut after reading about her, she would be a great guest, so I called her and asked for this interview. She didn’t hesitate to say yes despite a busy schedule. Kamara is a full-time student at Northern Kentucky University where she’s pursuing her master’s degree in Public Administration. She also works full time as the Administrative and Community Affairs Director for Councilmember Chris Seelbach. And it’s while working for him that her hair story helped make history.

Councilman Seelbach hired Kamara in April 2019. After hearing about Kamara’s and other black women’s natural hair struggles, he proposed adding natural hair and hairstyles to the city's discrimination policy. On October 9th, council approved the addition by a vote of seven-to-one. Now, Cincinnati employers can’t ask a person to change their hair at work for any reason.

Kamara was born in Bermuda, her dad’s native home, and raised in Columbia, Maryland, which is about an hour outside of Washington, D.C. Her mom is from Trinidad.

A few days before our interview, Kamara lost her voice. It improved enough for her to talk to me, but she still had a bit of a frog in her throat.

On today’s show, I interview my Delta Sigma Theta Sorority sister, Carla Moore. Born and raised in Akron, Ohio, Carla is the second Delta featured on the program.  Don’t worry, this won’t turn into a DST podcast, but a few more of my Sorors will probably stop by.

My father introduced me to Carla in the mid-1990s when I was a cub reporter covering crime and courts in Indiana, and she was a judge in the Akron Municipal Court. Aware of my beats, she gave me the opportunity of a lifetime.  She let me sit next to her on the bench while she presided over cases, so I could see everything going on in the courtroom from her vantage point.  The experience enriched my reporting, and I’ll always be grateful to her for that.

Carla’s job as a judge is the reason why I wanted to share her natural hair journey.  Before retiring, she sat on the bench for 15 years in the Akron Municipal Court and 13 years on the Ohio Ninth District Court of Appeals.  She was the first black female judge elected to both positions.  Getting reelected required a lot of campaigning, which meant she had to maintain a clean, professional look.  And, a big part of that was hair.

On today’s show, I interview my sistah from another mistah, Estee Irby.  I wanted to talk to Estee because she’s my natural and silver hair twin.  Like me, she has course, very tight coily curls.  But, unlike me, she’s a natural newbie.  After relaxing her hair for nearly 30 years, she stopped chemically straightening it about two years ago, which I did not see coming.  But, what surprised me even more was her decision to stop dyeing.  She got her first gray strand before she was a teenager, so coloring had been a part of her life for years.          

In this HHIGI bonus clip, my Delta Sigma Theta Sorority sister, Jennifer Jones, explains why she'll never wear wigs and weaves, but she has considered sporting braids.  Braids pic courtesy of Meghan Linehan at https://www.flickr.com/photos/meghanl/.

On today’s show, I interview my Delta Sigma Theta Sorority sister, Jennifer Jones.  Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Jennifer was one of the first people I called for advice when I was thinking about going natural. She’s a Quality Assurance Analyst based in Charlotte, North Carolina. We pledged Delta together in the early 1990’s. If you’re not familiar with black hair care lingo, here’s a brief breakdown of common terms to help get you through the show. Chemical relaxer aka relaxer aka perm is a creamy substance with lye, which is applied to naturally curly hair to make it straight. Hot comb is a metal comb that’s heated on top of a stove and combed through curly hair to make it straight.  Touch up is when you apply relaxer to new hair growth that hasn’t been permed. TWA is an acronym for tweeny weeny afro. Locs are short for dreadlocks.  Jennifer and I started our conversation talking about her hair texture.