The parents of a 7th grade student at Calvary Baptist private school in Slidell said they were dumbfounded last week when their son's decision to wear a braided hairstyle was met with questions about being a gangster by the school's principal.
"I picked him up, just like normal and asked how was your day? How did your friends like your braids?" Ashely Thorn said of her son, Dalon. "We’re driving out of the parking lot and he said the principal pulled him aside today and asked if his braids represented being a gangster."
The Thorns, a Black family of five who recently moved from Shreveport to the Slidell area, found the principal's questions troubling. Braided hair, they said, is widely normalized and not an infraction against school policy.
"You don't think you have to prep your child or even think of something like that for something that's so small," Thorn said.
The Thorns said they called principal Angelyn Mesman that afternoon and left a message with her staff, which went unreturned. The next morning, the parents met with Mesman in her office.
Mesman and John Brown, interim pastor at Calvary Baptist Church, declined to comment Thursday through the church secretary, after multiple attempts to reach them by phone and in person.
In an audio recording of the meeting taken by the Thorns, Mesman said she pulled Dalon aside to avoid embarrassing him and said she wanted to know what his braids represented.
"I've never had a student wear their braids like that. I've had teachers personally come to me and ask about his hair and what I thought about it," Mesman says on the recording.
She continued: "I have seen children grow up in this school and I've seen them change, so I was just checking to see where we are. I just wanted to see his heart. Our culture is changing. Little boys used to have regular little haircuts."
Throughout the 16-minute discussion, Mesman repeatedly referenced a changing youth culture she feared Dalon could fall susceptible to.
“I'm seeing a lot of young people listening to a lot of rappers pushing for drugs and doing things opposite of Christ."
Still, the Thorns said they struggled to understand why their son’s hairstyle prompted him being pulled away during school time and questioned about his intentions.
Hairstyles commonly worn in the Black community have long been a source of contention in school and workplace settings. Last August, the Louisiana Legislature unanimously passed the CROWN Act, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against someone based on how they wear their hair.
A federal civil rights lawsuit was brought against a Catholic school in Jefferson Parish in 2018 when a Black student was sent home in tears for wearing hair extensions to school. The parents of the student dropped the suit after the school rescinded its policy.
Calvary Baptist, a private tuition-based school for students in grades Pre-K-eighth, has specific grooming policies in its handbook. Braids aren’t mentioned as a dress code infraction, but “dreadlocks and afros over 3” are not acceptable.
With two days left of the school year, Dalon wasn’t told to remove his braids.
But the family said the principal's lack of cultural understanding is among the reasons they've decided to transfer Dalon to a new school next fall.
