Hanover to host natural hair festival on Emancipation Day

Claudia Gardner, the promoter of the Jamaica Natural Hair Health and Beauty Festival, which is scheduled to be held at Fort Charlotte in Lucea, Hanover, on Emancipation Day, said the promotion of natural hair is of critical importance to the country’s culture.

“The key purpose of the event is to encourage women and girls to love, manage and wear their beautiful natural hair, of all types, with pride,” she said.

The festival is being held at a time when there is much public discourse about the wearing of locks in school.

Jamaicans for Justice last week filed a matter in the Constitutional Court against Kensington Primary School in Portmore, St Catherine, for discrimination.

The school principal reportedly told the mother of a five-year-old that the child would not be allowed to attend the school with the locks because her hair could attract lice.

Gardner said the date for the staging of the competition was deliberate.

“It is a day to emancipate yourself from all chemicals and everything that is toxic, including any negative thoughts about your African identity and heritage, and know that your blackness is not a mark of shame, as was taught during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, but is a mark of beauty,” she said.

The festival, which features Afro and locks pageants, will include natural hair product exhibitors, vegetarian and Rastafarian foods, a farmers’ market, plant displays and a seminar featuring expert presenters on health and wellness.