Inside the court fight over the safety of hair relaxers and Black hair care

Growing up in Chatham in the late 1990s, Traccye Love wished for the long, smooth tresses of pop star Aaliyah.

“That was the look then — smooth and straight,” said Love, 40, of Oak Park. "My mom would press it [with a hot comb], but I wanted it to stay straight."

Love wasn’t allowed to get her first chemical hair relaxer until she turned 18. For most of the women in her close-knit, predominantly Black community, the rite of passage of using relaxers to straighten their naturally kinky, thick hair had come much younger. Love’s mother worried about the dangers of using a relaxer: chemical burns or brittle hair caused by lye and similar chemicals in hair-straightening products.

Read more of Andy Grimm and Natalie Y. Moore's reporting on the hair relaxer lawsuit in the Chicago Sun-Times.