Wendy Greene
Law Professor, Drexel, Legal Expert and Advisor for the C.R.O.W.N. Act
The daughter of American civil rights activists, 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. The first tenured African American woman law professor at Drexel University Kline School of Law, Professor Greene’s legal scholarship and public advocacy have generated civil rights protections for victims of discrimination throughout the United States. Through her award-winning publications and activism, Professor Greene crafted a legal blueprint for historic civil rights legislation known as the C.R.O.W.N. Acts, which has also shaped the enforcement stance of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), federal courts, administrative law judges, and civil and human rights organizations in race discrimination cases involving discrimination African descendants endure when donning natural hairstyles.
Teen Vogue, Now This News, and BBC News have celebrated Professor Greene for her pioneering role in increasing public awareness around as well as securing legal redress for what she has coined as “grooming codes discrimination.” From serving as a legal advisor and expert in civil rights cases challenging race-based natural hair discrimination, co-drafting and advising on nearly 20 pieces of civil rights legislation including the federal and California C.R.O.W.N. Acts, testifying in support of this legislation across the nation, delivering public lectures around the world, to publishing seminal legal scholarship, Professor Greene’s advocacy has informed every key legal pronouncement throughout the United States that discrimination African descendants systematically encounter on the basis of their natural hairstyles is race discrimination. One of the nation’s leading legal experts on this global civil rights issue and founder of the #FreeTheHair movement, she is currently writing her first book, #FreeTheHair: Locking Black Hair to Civil Rights Movements, under contract with the University of California, Berkeley Press.
A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Professor Greene is a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana (B.A. cum laude with Honors in English and a double-minor in African American Studies and Spanish); Tulane University School of Law (J.D.); and The George Washington University School of Law (LL.M.). Professor Greene also currently serves as the Director of the Center for Law, Policy, and Social Action at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law
Website for Professor Greene’s #FreeTheHair
movement and advocacy efforts:
Media
“Because Advocacy Can’t Wait” Drexel University commercial featuring Professor Wendy Greene’s scholarly activism to combat grooming codes discrimination:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWH0LYkJ8ZA
PBS News Hour, How Hair Discrimination Impacts Black Americans in Their Personal Lives and the Workplace,
BBC segment, The Tangled History of Black Hair Discrimination in the US
Law 360 Glass Ceiling report, “Wearing Natural Hair in Big Law,” on which Professor Greene consulted:
“The CROWN Act & Transforming the Rules of Professionalism around Black Hair” by Natalie Runyon for Thomson Reuters (this is a good companion piece for the Law 360 Glass Ceiling Report)
https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/government/crown-act-legal-professionalism/
Now This News: Carmelyn Malalis and Wendy Greene Fought and Won the NYC Hair Discrimination Law:
Doris “Wendy” Greene Helped Fight for New York City’s Ban on Natural Hair Discrimination
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/doris-wendy-greene-natural-hair-anti-discrimination-ban
John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” segment on Natural Hair Discrimination (beware of expletives)
Select Interviews on the C.R.O.W.N. Act, Natural Hair Bias, Discrimination, and Hair Diversity in the Workplace:
Mane Moves Live! “Natural Hair & The Law” with Natasha Gaspard and Professor Wendy Greene
Celebrating the Anniversary of the California C.R.O.W.N. Act—an interview with Lisa Deaderick and Professor Wendy Greene for the San Diego Tribune
Professor Greene’s publications on race-based natural hair discrimination and grooming codes discrimination in workplaces:
D. Wendy Greene, Splitting Hairs: The 11th Circuit’s Take on Workplace Bans against Black Women’s Natural Hair in EEOC v. Catastrophe Management Solutions, 71 Miami L. Rev. 987 (2017)
https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol71/iss4/5/
D. Wendy greene, Title Vii: What’s Hair (And Other Race-Based Characteristics) Got To Do With It?79 u. Colo. L. Rev. 1355 (2008) (republished in 2021 as lead article of four articles selected for the law journal’s special issue: a retrospective on race in america, 92 u. Colo. L. Rev. 1276 (2021))
https://cms.detr.nv.gov/Content/Media/Greene_Title_7_Article.pdf
D. Wendy Greene, A Multidimensional Analysis of What Not to Wear in the Workplace: Hijabs and Natural Hair, 8 FIU L. REV. 333 (2013)
https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1172&context=lawreview
D. Wendy Greene, Black Women Can’t Have Blonde Hair…in the Workplace, 14 J. Gender Race & Just. 405 (2011)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1859662
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, More Hair Raising Decisions and How Professor Wendy Greene Combs Through Their Flaws:
Link to the text of the federal C.R.O.W.N. Act for which Professor Greene is a legal architect and leading advocate:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2116/text
Speaking on
The C.R.O.W.N. Act: The legal impetus for legislation
Publications
D. Wendy Greene, Rewritten Opinion of Rogers v. American Airlines, Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and Law, Edited by Bennett Capers, Devon Carbado, Robin Lenhardt, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig (Cambridge University Press)
D. Wendy Greene, Rewritten Opinion of EEOC v. Catastrophe Management Solutions, Feminist Judgments: Employment Discrimination Opinions Rewritten, Edited by Ann McGinley and Nicole Porter (Cambridge University Press, October 2020)