Isis Brantley, natural hair matriarch reflects on activism, aims to train next generation (2025)

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Isis Brantley has spent decades fighting to break down state imposed barriers governing hair braiding.

Her vision all those years ago was a state where people could earn a living from the African ancestral practice of braiding without being subject to burdensome permitting regulations. Those regulations, Brantley said, unfairly limited economic prosperity for hair braiders.

Hair braiders — nationally and locally — faced licensing requirements that limited their activity. Moreover, Black people who wanted to wear their hair naturally also faced discrimination and bias, especially in corporate settings.

Brantley, 66, joined that fight as well by pushing for passage in Texas of the Crown Act, which prohibited discrimination against natural hair styles and textures.

“As a passionate advocate for the rights of braiders and natural hair stylists, [Brantley] has fought for the ability to open businesses without the burden of cosmetology licensing,” said Pamela Ferrell, a Washington, D.C.-based natural hair activist. “After dedicating over 30 years to champion economic liberty for hair braiders, her legacy as a community leader and braid educator will continue to inspire and impact future generations.”

Known as the “Matriarch of Natural Hair Care,” Brantley describes natural hair as the seat of one’s soul.

“It is the highest point on your body that connects to everything in the heavens,” she said. “It is the melanin. It’s the carbon, it’s the pineal gland, it’s the crown. It’s everything that is in nature.”

What started out as Brantley’s passion for natural hair and hair braiding became a movement and fight for freedom.

From theater to natural hair movement

A South Dallas native, Brantley said her mother was a braider, her grandmother was a braider, the community was braiding – “everybody was braiding.”

They would dress up and braid hair in the community. Her family owned a small theater company called Kool Kat Klub, where they would invite people to their home to showcase their talents.

Her family would just share “art and creativity” with the community, Brantley said, which in time inspired her to share her gifts and talents.

From 1978 to 1980, Brantley attended what is now the University of North Texas, where she studied theater. While in college, Brantley found that she wanted to do something different with her hair, so she braided it.

“I found my connection to African beauty. I started seeing a lot of these styles on other artists, and it just really inspired me to really hone in on my talent and start braiding,” she said.

Brantley began braiding other people’s hair. This created a “big ruckus” at the school, Brantley said, just because they wanted to have their hair braided.

At that time, Brantley said, there was discrimination against Black hair and how it was perceived — wearing your hair natural or braided just wasn’t considered professional, and some of those biases were present on campus.

“So from there, I decided ‘I’m here for theater … but maybe, just maybe, I could start a movement doing natural hair,‘” she said.

And so her journey began.

Crime of braiding hair

Brantley decided she didn’t want to go to college anymore and that she wanted to braid hair full time. She opened a small braiding shop in South Dallas.

Just a week after she opened the shop in 1997, Brantley said a group of Dallas cops stormed into her business to arrest her for braiding hair without a cosmetology license.

“Seven cops came into the salon and basically carted me off like a common criminal in front of my clients, in front of my community,” she said. “It was very sad. It was a very sad day.”

Brantley said she wasn’t in jail that long — probably a day or two — because the community rallied around her and supported her in her release. But the 20-year fight for her livelihood, braiding hair, that would lie ahead of her was imprisonment enough, she said.

A “braid war,” was unfolding across the country where people were being fined large amounts for braiding hair, Brantley said.

Attorney Thelma Clardy represented Brantley during her trial in court, which continued into 1998, Brantley said. She was found guilty and ultimately had to pay a roughly $700 fine. After that, Brantley’s fight to change the law commenced.

Ferrell, co-founder of Cornrows & Co., and her husband helped Brantley in her journey of activism and advocacy in the natural hair field. Ferrell said she received a call from Brantley after her arrest.

“If you can just imagine us getting that phone call — because we’re guiding [Brantley] — that’s the last thing we would have expected, that [a] group of police would come in and handcuff you, take you to jail and strip search you, as if you’re a criminal,” Ferrell said.

Ferrell told Brantley, “don’t stop braiding” and to “keep fighting.”

Brantley said she went to state regulators and explained that braiding “is our culture” and “how we express ourselves.” According to Brantley, the regulators said that the practice isn’t in the state’s books or laws.

“We said, ‘That’s exactly the point. It’s not in your books. It’s not in your laws. You don’t have anything that talks about the culture of African beauty and African beautification. So we would like to share [it] with you,‘” Brantley said.

For nearly 20 years, Brantley, who was later supported by the Institute for Justice, fought for braiders to be able to freely practice the art of braiding hair with minimal regulations from the state.

Finally, in 2015, Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 2717 into law, which deregulated hair braiding in Texas. Because of Brantley’s activism, braiders in Texas were able to practice freely, or even start businesses.

“Abbott signed [the bill] into law, which fed millions of families, all types of people from all over the country, [have] migrated here,” she said. “They’ve migrated here and have made a lot of money braiding, setting up braiding shops.”

The fight continues

Brantley’s decadeslong battle with the state to deregulate the practice of braiding hair set her on the course of natural hair activism, she said, “a total change, shift and transformation.”

As Brantley continued to braid hair, she started to notice that people were afraid to wear their braids in the workplace. She said they weren’t comfortable wearing braids or having their natural hair showing.

Brantley’s message to those struggling with confidently flaunting their tresses? Stand up for what God has given you.

“This is how you naturally wear your hair. You can’t change your elephant into a bee. A bee is a bee. An elephant is an elephant,” she said. “Your hair spirals like your DNA, so it’s a part of your responsibility to stand out for what God has given you naturally.”

Brantley would visit schools back in the 1990s to address the “unfair treatment that the children were receiving” about their hair. She said this treatment was prevalent in other places as well, such as the military and other professional settings.

Brantley said she began to follow in the footsteps of her friend Ferrell, who was making a difference by advocating for natural hair rights in the military and workplace.

Black people have always battled with being discriminated against regarding their hair, Brantley said, but the issue was magnified in the 2010s.

“There were meteorologists that were being fired from their jobs. There were nurses that were being fired from their jobs,” Brantley said. “There were people I remember specifically that were on the police force that had to literally change their hairstyle, or they could not be chief of police, or they could not be a police at all.”

This struggle, now becoming more evident, led Brantley to join the fight in passing the Crown Act. The law passed two years ago.

But even with the law’s passing, Brantley said the issue is ongoing.

“It just didn’t start in 2015. It’s been going on since the birth of African hair in America, since the coming across the ocean,” she said. “It’s been going on quietly, but now it’s more on the front line.”

Healing through the hair

One of Brantley’s missions is to “heal through the hair,” and she does this by offering proper hair care, education, training and spiritual guidance. Brantley said over the course of her career, she’s seen so many cases of alopecia, which is a type of hair loss affecting many African Americans.

Brantley launched her own hair care line back in 1998 called Sisters of Isis, which has helped people with alopecia in addition to other skin conditions such as eczema, seborrhea and psoriasis.

As far as activism goes, Brantley said she’s more focused on educating people now.

“I focus on the education, so that we can get the information. We can understand how to deal with alopecia. … Why are we losing our hair? Why are we braiding tight,” she said.

Brantley is still operating out of her salon, Naturally Isis, on Preston Road in Far North Dallas. This is the same location where she runs her braiding school, The Institute of Ancestral Braiding.

She offers a curriculum for braiders that covers the details and basic health care techniques for braiding and twisting with and without extensions, according to her website.

“[Education is] going to be the best thing that ever happened to this industry, because we handle black hair like we’re angry,” Brantley said. “The next level is to educate ourselves, so we can handle these beautiful strands of love.”