Juneteeth has become a public holiday in Minnesota, and under a bill signed by Gov. Tim Waltz on Friday, it is now illegal to discriminate based on hair texture or style.
A Democratic governor has made Minnesota the 26th state to recognize June 19 as a holiday. Two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, but this is his 1865 date, considered the final abolition of slavery in the United States . It will become a federal holiday in 2021 and is already being observed by many local governments and businesses.
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Walz also held a signing ceremony for the bill, known as the CROWN Act, on Friday and officially signed it on Wednesday. Short for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair”, it explicitly prohibits racism based on natural hair texture and hairstyles such as braids, locks, and twists.
Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz signed a bill making Juneteenth a state holiday and banning so-called “hair discrimination.”
(Stephen Mathulen/Getty Images)
Surrounded by a mob of mostly black female legislators and community leaders, Waltz joked about “the irony of this bill being signed by an elderly white bald man”, but it addressed the real issue. He said that
Democratic Rep. Esther Agbaje of Minneapolis, lead author of the House of Representatives, said in 2017 the U.S. Supreme Court “refused to consider whether natural hair is an immutable part of race, so the bill is needed.” said it was.
Connecticut Passes Crown Act Banning Discrimination Against Natural Hair
Since 2019, 19 other states and several cities have enacted similar protections.
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“We’re saying that the law doesn’t allow hair discrimination as a substitute for racism,” Agbaje said.
