Bottleneckers. William Mellor
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health officer was equally skeptical: “In the title of the bill . . . where the language ‘for the protection of the public health’ occurs,” he testified, “I believe that this should be eliminated, to make it quite clear that this is a bill that means to protect primarily the guild interests.”69 Representative Martin Dies closed the debate by proclaiming:
In the guise of sanitation and health, the bill gives the board dictatorial powers which are not needed to accomplish the avowed purposes of the bill, but which may be used to narrow the field of competition so that competent and worthy people will be denied an opportunity to make a living.70
More than fifty years later, Dies’s proclamation sounded like prophesy. Rather than shutter his business, complete the irrelevant licensure requirements, and impose the same on his employees, Taalib petitioned the board to create an exemption for natural braiding.71 Using the same logic that Jestina Clayton would employ almost twenty years later, he argued that since his shop only braided hair, its work had nothing to do with cosmetology.72 He went so far as to hire a lawyer to draft proposed exemptions for African hairstyling, but the DC Board of Cosmetology—at the time made up entirely of licensed cosmetologists73—was recalcitrant. Taalib then lobbied the DC City Council, again asking that an exception be made for braiders. The result was the same. Finally, in September 1991, the DC Board of Appeals decided to uphold the $1,000 fines.74
Unbowed, Taalib sued the DC Board of Cosmetology on November 1, 1991, seeking an exemption from the licensing laws and the cessation of the board’s enforcement efforts, including its attempt to shut down his business.75 By that time, his plight had attracted national attention, so much so that a member of the cosmetology board appeared on ABC’s 20/20 program to defend the board’s attempts to close Cornrows & Co.
The appearance backfired. As the late William Raspberry wrote in his nationally syndicated column following the broadcast:
A member of the District of Columbia’s Cosmetology Board was on ABC’s “20/20” program the other night, looking hidebound and ridiculous. Small wonder. She was defending the city’s attempt to close down Cornrows & Co., a beauty salon that specializes in African-style hair braiding, all because the operators are not school-trained and certified in pin-curling, chemical treatments and a host of other techniques the shop never uses. . . . It looked for all the world as though the members of the Cosmetology Board, almost all of them beauty shop and/or beauty school operators, were more interested in protecting their own interests than in reaching a sensible resolution of the licensing case.76
On February 2, 1992, US district judge Stanley Sporkin reluctantly ruled against Taalib, citing an old Supreme Court precedent,77 but he nevertheless chided the DC City Council for its actions.78 Stating that he was “very disturbed” by the council’s failure to change its regulations, Sporkin wrote, “It is difficult to understand why the District of Columbia wants to put a legitimate business out of operation.”79 He thus urged the district to reconsider the issue:
Certainly the D.C. Council can exercise sound judgment and common sense to accommodate Plaintiffs’ needs . . . the Court would certainly urge the District to consider the plight of Plaintiffs and the good citizens they have faithfully served for over twelve years.80
Taalib appealed the decision, but the suit was eventually dropped when, in December 1992, the city council amended the cosmetology law, creating a less onerous and more sensible specialty license just for natural haircare.81 Although this represented a victory for Taalib and other braiders who would later open shops of their own, it did not come cheap. “I think about all the things I could have done . . . if I hadn’t been so consumed by my struggle just to earn an honest buck,” Taalib said ruefully.82
Although the issue was settled in DC, in the years after his battle, Taalib’s story would play out again and again with the bottleneckers in states across the country, only with different actors and slight variations in circumstance. On October 1, 1997, Cheryll Hosey sued the state of Ohio because it required that hair braiders earn a cosmetology license in order to braid hair for a living. The cosmetology license required about nine months of training at a cost of between $3,000 and $5,000 (at that time) and passing a state test.83 By the time Cheryll opened her salon in 1996, she had already been braiding for eighteen years, having first learned the skill as a young child. As the years went on, she realized the potential to make braiding a career. “I’ve had so many family members and friends who said ‘braid my hair, braid my hair’ that I said, ‘I can make this my business.’”84 And so she did; by the one-year anniversary of her business, she was serving more than two hundred regular customers who kept coming back because she offered a service traditional salons had neither the time nor the skills to offer.85
All of this, however, was irrelevant to the Ohio State Board of Cosmetology. The board slapped Cheryll’s salon with several legal notices of violation and prevented it from receiving a much-needed small-business loan by telling the lender the salon would not be able to continue operating without a cosmetology license. According to Dave Williamson, then executive director of the board, getting the license was necessary to learn about public health and safety,86 but that weak justification did not enjoy much support among legislators.
As the lawsuit made its way through federal court, a bill was introduced in the state House and an amendment offered in the Senate to exempt braiding from the cosmetology law. Senator Eric Fingerhut had learned of the plight of braiders trying to make a living and was appalled and sponsored the Senate amendment. “Then in comes the State of Ohio, the same state that just told single women to get off public assistance, to put them out of business,” he said. “I’m outraged by it. I think it’s terrible public policy.”87 He was not alone. In 1999, the state legislature reformed the cosmetology laws, creating a natural haircare license, thereby making Cheryll’s lawsuit moot.88
While Cheryll faced the real possibility of losing her business, braiders in other states were experiencing even-worse trials.89 In places like Texas and California, investigators, often accompanied by police, threatened to lock braiders up and put them out of business.90 In October 1997, Dallas police arrested Dana “Isis” Brantley, a single mother of five children, who was running a salon as a way to transition from welfare to work.91
As Isis stood in her salon consulting briefly with a prospective client—who turned out to be an undercover officer with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department—seven more officers rushed in, accompanied by a Texas State Cosmetology Commission inspector, who happened to be a former employee of a nearby cosmetology school. “I was placed in the back of the police car while my clients watched,” Isis recalled. “I have never been so humiliated in all my life.” Things only got worse from there. “I was strip searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and then placed in a holding cell with some really bad people. I just couldn’t believe I was being handcuffed and taken to jail like a common criminal for hair braiding.”92
In another crackdown, three undercover investigators from California’s Department of Consumer Affairs, posing as state police officers, staged a sting operation at a popular braiding salon in West Los Angeles on July 1, 1998. Investigator Ayn Lauderdale spent five hours having her hair braided by shop owner Sabrina Reece, then slipped into the bathroom and reappeared in a police jacket, soon to be joined by two more investigators. The three carried guns and rifled through the shop without a warrant, threatening to arrest Reece. After taking photographs and the Social Security numbers of everyone present, the investigators left with the so-called evidence—styling gel, a pair of scissors, a page torn from an appointment book, and a single hair clip—sealed in a plastic baggie. It wasn’t Sabrina’s first run-in with the state’s cosmetology board. The thirty-two-year-old mother of two had been fined the previous year for operating without a license.93
The motivation for such-aggressive police action was captured in a statement given to the Los Angeles Times by a licensed cosmetologist saying that Sabrina was “a threat to those of us who are licensed and went through the normal channels” and that unlicensed braiders could undercut cosmetologists’