Join the NIU College of Law for its next Race and the Law Conversation on “#FreeTheHair: Locking Black Hair to Civil Rights Movements” on Tuesday, April 15 at 6:00 p.m. (CST) with preeminent civil rights scholar-activist Professor D. Wendy Greene. Professor Greene serves as a legal expert for landmark civil rights cases, legal architect of the federal C.R.O.W.N. Act and legal advisor for parallel civil rights legislation in the U.S. and abroad. NIU Law Dean Cassandra L. Hill will moderate.
Professor Greene will delve into the contemporary social justice movement aimed at addressing racial discrimination based on African descendants’ natural and protective hairstyles such as twists, braids, afros and locs. In so doing, Professor Greene will illuminate how her movement to #FreeTheHair and to redress grooming codes discrimination is integral to the broader, global effort to actualize racial justice for African descendants and other people of color.
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
6:00 – 7:00 p.m. CST
Register Now for this virtual Event via Zoom
1-hour MCLE for Illinois attorneys. Presentation Outline.
FEATURED SPEAKER
The daughter of American civil rights activists, Professor Doris “Wendy” Greene is a trailblazing U.S. anti-discrimination law scholar, teacher, and advocate who has devoted her professional life’s work to advancing racial, color, and gender equity in workplaces and beyond. She is the first (and only) tenured African American woman law professor at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law and the Director of the Kline Law Center for Law, Policy, and Social Action. Professor Greene’s award-winning publications and public advocacy have generated civil rights protections for countless individuals who experience discrimination in various spheres.
A visionary scholar, she is the architect of two new legal constructs recognized within civil rights discourse, praxis, and theory: “misperception discrimination” and “grooming codes discrimination.” Her internationally recognized publications advancing protections against these and other forms of discrimination have shaped the enforcement stance of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), administrative law judges, federal courts, and civil rights organizations. The 11th Circuit and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals endorsed Professor Greene’s published definition of race as a legal authority on the social construction of race and as a practicable definition for constitutional decision-making respectively.
In fact, the definition of race she proposed in her 2008 article, “Title VII: What’s Hair (and Other Race-Based Characteristics) Got to Do with It?”, is being adopted in history-making civil rights legislation popularly known as the C.R.O.W.N. Acts (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Acts): the first laws in the nation to expressly declare discrimination African descendants encounter based upon their natural hairstyles such as afros, twists, locs, and braids constitutes unlawful racial discrimination.
One of the nation’s leading legal experts on this global civil rights issue, Teen Vogue, Now This News, BBC World News, The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, World Afro Day, the Association of American Law Schools, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, among others have celebrated Professor Greene for her pioneering scholarly-activism in the U.S. and abroad. Professor Greene has advocated on behalf of African descendants’ human rights to be free from racial discrimination and to express their cultural identities in four continents, and notably, before the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, the House of Commons in England, the National Assembly of the French Parliament, as well as legislatures across the nation including the United States Congress. She serves as a legal advisor and expert in seminal civil rights cases challenging natural hair discrimination in schools and workplaces. Professor Greene is the legal architect of the federal C.R.O.W.N. Act while also having served as legal expert, testifying on behalf of over 20 pieces of civil rights legislation on state and municipal levels in addition to serving as a legal advisor and rapporteur for historic human rights legislation in France that governs discrimination on the basis of hair texture, color, and style. Founder of #FreeTheHair movement (which galvanized a sister-movement in France—Liberons Nos Cheveux), she is currently writing her first book, #FreeTheHair: Locking Black Hair to Civil Rights Movements, under contract with the University of California, Berkeley Press.
Professor Greene is a highly sought-after speaker, commentator, and consultant in the U.S. and abroad on myriad matters related to civil and human rights law and policy including organizational diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. She frequently provides legal commentary on these issues to media outlets such as The Washington Post, PBS News, BBC News, NBC News, ABC News and the New York Times.
A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Professor Greene is a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana (Bachelor of Arts cum laude with Honors in English and a double-minor in African American Studies and Spanish). She also earned a Juris Doctor from Tulane University School of Law and a Master of Law (LL.M.) from The George Washington University School of Law where she specialized in anti-discrimination law, comparative slavery and race relations law in the Americas and Caribbean.
