
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995                   TAG: 9509050070
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                 LENGTH: Short

MANAGER'S BRAID RULE REVERSED

Three students have won the right to wear braids to work at a Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers restaurant after a manager briefly banned the hairstyle as ``prone to bugs and lice.''

On their side, the students had the corporate logo, featuring a red-haired girl with braids, and Virginia health regulations, which recommend braids as a hair restraint for food handlers.

The students, all black women, have shoulder-length hair braided into more than 100 stiff strands in a style popular among black youths. The three called the ban racist, kept their hairdos and said they were willing to be dismissed.

The women said the manager of the Chesterfield County fast-food shop told them last month that their hair was unsanitary, although they all wore the required caps or visors.

The president of the franchise, which operates seven Wendy's restaurants in the Richmond area, reversed the manager's policy after an account of the dispute appeared Thursday afternoon on the front page of The Richmond Free Press, a black-oriented weekly. ``We realized we had goofed up,'' said the president, Edward P. Anderson.

- The New York Times

by CNB