Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson’s afro has become larger than life — a symbol of Black resistance and political power. In a state shaped by slavery, segregation and ongoing struggles over racial justice, Pearson often draws scrutiny beyond his politics. Now, in a new interview with rapper Vic Mensa, he’s reflecting on his hair as part of the legacy of Black resistance. But you may be shocked to know that he didn’t set out to make a political statement with his signature afro.
“I started growing my hair out in 2020, and initially it was because I didn’t have to go into work,” Pearson told the Chicago rapper. “I never had hair my whole life.”
While working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Pearson’s decision to grow his hair took on a deeper significance amid a nationwide movement against systemic racism. As protests against police brutality swept the country following the murder of George Floyd, Pearson started seeing his hair as part of a broader struggle for Black liberation.
“All the things started happening with the movement for Black lives in 2020. It did start to feel a lot more personal,” he said. “It did start to feel like our hair does defy gravity and is also a statement of resistance and persistence. And over these last several years, it’s become more of that.”
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Pearson’s experience echoes the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when Afros became powerful symbols of Black pride, political consciousness, and a rejection of Eurocentric beauty standards, as we’ve previously reported. Activist Angela Davis’s afro became one of the movement’s most recognizable images, demonstrating how a natural hairstyle could communicate political solidarity and defiance. For Pearson, the backlash to his own hair made that symbolism unmistakable.
“From the day I got sworn in as an elected official [in 2023], people have been talking about, ‘N-word, cut your hair,’” he told Mensa. “That was one of the first emails I ever got as a state representative. Somebody said, ‘You look like an n-word. Cut your hair.’”
From that day on, Pearson said he knew he would never cut his hair. “If I’m a bald white man, somehow you like me better? What is that?” he asked.
“Ultimately, I think it is fear,” he concluded, adding that wearing his afro “has the imagery for them, of the resistance and the persistence of Black power – of not being subservient to a status quo that’s broken.”
Pearson connected that resistance to the cultural knowledge enslaved Africans carried across the Atlantic. Referencing okra, rice, corn and cornrows, he highlighted traditions through which Black people used their natural hair to preserve foodways, cultural practices, and knowledge despite forced displacement.
“We literally transported parts of our culture and our lives across the Atlantic Ocean through our hair,” he added. “It’s all connected.”
In 2026, hair discrimination remains a contemporary concern. The state representative pointed to the CROWN Act – legislation designed to protect people from discrimination based on natural hair and protective hairstyles.
Pearson continued, “It’s absurd that in any other context or world that you have to protect people from losing their employment because they could be discriminated against because they wore a fro or locs or any other” natural hairstyle.
Reflecting on how Black hair has long been politicized and misunderstood, Pearson’s Afro stands as a reminder of the resistance.
“They don’t want to see young Black educated people wearing their hair in a way that they don’t want you to,” he continued. “And honestly, I had never thought about it in that way until 2020.”
