Black Women Whose Hair Cost Them Their Jobs
Tiffany Bryan
After surviving bone-marrow cancer, Tiffany Bryan decided to start wearing her natural hair in 2008. Five years later when she was hired by AEG Worldwide, Bryan, who was a security guard with the company, was fired for refusing to “tame” her Afro. “Bryan filed a $900,000 suit against the company in Brooklyn Federal Court last year, saying her supervisor told her she ‘looked like she stuck her finger in a socket and was electrocuted’ and another manager advised she ‘needed to do something with her hair.’ Though Bryan tried to appease her superiors, the final straw came when she was told she had to wear her large ‘fro in a ponytail — a style that simply wasn’t doable,” reported Clutch.