“It was not just our hairstyles that had evolved. We had evolved. We, as in Black women, as in me. Here, I write a modern-day Black hair story that is not about Will, Chris, or Jada. But it is about Black women remembering our roots, when braids told tribal truths, and bald heads on little girls was deliberate.”

Kim Green writes about what it means to be a Black woman and move through the world with so much attention paid to one physical feature: hair. It’s a reality for countless Black women, but Green reminds Black women to have great pride in their hair.

This story was created by Detour, a journalism brand focused on the best stories in Black travel, in partnership with McClatchy’s The Charlotte Observer and Miami Herald. Detour’s approach to travel and storytelling seeks to tell previously under-reported or ignored narratives by shifting away from the customary routes framed in Eurocentrism. The detour team is made up of an A-list of award-winning journalists, writers, historians, photographers, illustrators and filmmakers.