MORGANTOWN — WVU Law professor Jena Martin said she wore her hair straight for more than 20 years — not because she wanted to — but because she believed that’s what was professionally acceptable.
That changed in 2018.
“I wanted students who look like me to be able to see someone who teaches corporate courses and know they can also wear their hair natural,” she said.
Now Martin and her cohorts on the Morgantown Human Rights Commission are asking the city to back the CROWN Act.
CROWN is an acronym that stands for Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.
Martin recently told Morgantown City Council that discrimination based on natural hair styles in black communities is real and is an ingrained bias in the classroom and the workplace.
She cited a survey backed by the corporation Unilever, which, among other things, sells Dove branded products, indicating that 80% of black women have had to change their natural hair styles to fit in at work.
Council agreed to take the issue up — not only in support of the CROWN Act statewide, but by incorporating it into the city’s non-discrimination language.
“If we give a boost at the municipal level, that can help,” Councilor Jenny Selin said. “It makes sense if we’re asking the state to change that we’re willing to change ourselves.”
In other city news, an ordinance dissolving the Metropolitan Theatre Commission and the Morgantown History Museum Commission in service of an overarching Cultural Arts Commission will soon come before council.
The move comes with the blessing of both the theatre and museum commissions.
Richard McEwuen has served on both volunteer bodies for well over a decade.
“The creation of the arts and culture commission, I think, is a natural evolution of the two commissions and it’s a step forward for the city, the Met Theatre and the museum,” he said.
Lastly, city council plans to extend the emergency ordinance giving the city manager the authority to order public health measures in response to the ongoing pandemic.
Without additional action the ordinance will expire on May 21, if the extension is passed.
