Protesters gather near Texas superintendent’s home ahead of Darryl George hair trial

“You have done nothing wrong and I’m so proud of you for standing up for your rights,” she added.

George, a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, has been in in-school suspension or at an off-site disciplinary program for most of the school year. His ordeal started in August, when school officials said that George’s hair, which he wears in neatly twisted dreadlocks away from his face and neck, violates a district dress code regulating the length of boys’ hair.

“There is nothing that interferes with learning when it comes to our children’s hair,” said Ellen Reddy, an advocate with the Mississippi Coalition to End Corporal Punishment, an organization working to end physical punishment in Mississippi public schools. “This is about policing Black hair, Black bodies, and it has to stop. Our children have a right to wear their hair in natural hairstyles. That’s all we’re saying.”

George’s family has said the district is violating the state’s newly implemented CROWN Act, which prohibits race-based hair discrimination at work, school and in housing facilities in the state. However, the district has held that the law does not address hair length.