Black History

COMMENTARY: Study Linking Relaxers to Cancer is “Fake News”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump says manufacturers have “aggressively misled Black women to increase their profits.” He recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of a client who contracted uterine cancer after using chemical hair straightening products sold by L’Oréal USA. Cheryl Morrow, daughter of Black haircare legend Dr. Willie L. Morrow delivered this letter to Crump and his co-counsel.

Published

4 years ago

November 20, 2022

Oakland Post

Cheryl Morrow, daughter of Black haircare legend Dr. Willie L. Morrow.

By Cheryl Morrow | Special to California Black Media

A major study by the National Institute of Health (NHI) found that women who received hair relaxer treatments at least four times a year had a three times greater risk of uterine cancer. A previous study found a 30% increased risk of breast cancer.

Manufacturers are currently facing lawsuits across the country, because, according to the plaintiffs, they failed to warn them about the cancer risks associated with exposure to toxic chemicals in products.

Cheryl Morrow, daughter of Black haircare legend Dr. Willie L. Morrow delivered this letter to Crump and his co-counsel, and it reads:

“I am the daughter of the greatest textured [hair] beauty scientist in the history of the world, and a legatee of the only industrial revolution for American-born Africans. It is my opinion, American-born Africans represent the greatest human ascent in the modern civilized world as well as in human history.

“Enough is enough.” The exploitation of Black health for profit is ENOUGH!

The latest study of relaxers being linked and making Black women three times more susceptible to uterine cancer is simple junk research. This is an attack. I am taking the NIH study as an attack on our legacy.

What researchers seem to be missing, is that out of all the so-called corrosive salon treatments all races of women receive, relaxers are the one that carry the least amount of processing time. This simply means that researchers have not taken this into consideration, the time exposure factor.

Ben Crump and attorney Diandra Zimmerman, along with their client Jenny Mitchell, blindly filed this lawsuit while being grossly ill-informed.

If you, Attorney Crump want to chase a lawsuit because you think L’Oréal has deep pockets and money to blow just to save its face, I will push to encourage them not to do so. This will cast a stain on an ethical industry and will be an atrocity for an industry that has built enormous wealth and power for Black America.

I will not allow the propaganda machine’s random research to destroy and wither our industrial juggernaut with false concern and hidden agendas. This is fake news and junk research at its best.

I am all for research as my late father Willie Morrow, the greatest scientific mind in the history of beauty science, we’ve had always blazed the trail toward safe innovation for the Black haircare industry. The language attorney Crump and his co-counsel are using is reckless and feckless.

Black hair care is not predatory, and it sickens me to receive countless calls from my peers having to defend our profession from layperson idiocy and bloodthirsty lawyers.

Having spent 19 years in New York City, I have also devoted expertise in this area. This is not about me defending the giant beauty conglomerate L’Oréal — Lord knows I have had my issues with corporate run beauty companies, but food for thought here; the lack of state governed cosmetology boards addressing the scientific aspects of hair and scalps of textured hair Americans and the distinct way it grows and thrives, it just goes to show that all hair (textures) aren’t the same after all.

The apathetic way in which state boards and state policy makers focus on minor issues like cultural styling, which falls under the First Amendment freedom of expression clause, doesn’t deter discrimination from occurring. However, junk research is more sinister. It is about affecting economic bottom lines.

I will not have this happen!

Hair straightener (relaxer), or better known as lye, is a plantation concoction and was originally a Black man’s thing called the Konkaline aka “The Conk” trend.

This was formulated, mixed in the kitchens on plantations and slave camps of America. This was created by Africans on plantations due to our native-born styling implements not accompanying us to the Western world.

Having served as an expert witness in many Black haircare litigations for defendants, relaxers fall under the FDA’s category of depilatories.

This means it is a dissolver and not a penetrator. The nature of high alkaline pH treatments doesn’t interact with skin as you would like them to, nor do they work like most industry professionals, state board officials and chemists have educated us to believe they do.

This is the ignorance my father Willie L. Morrow tried to combat in 1982, but his efforts fell on deaf ears. Correcting this malfeasance is most urgent.

Every state board in the United States should also be sued if you want to go the lawsuit route. To be frank, because the consumer also has a home-based version and buys it at their own discretion, like tap faucet water, your eagerness to pick up on the NIH’s study that is not conclusive is beneath the oath you took when you became an attorney, my dear sir.

I have, and am willing, to educate all Americans and all adjacent professional industries that will join me in making beauty safer. We are a proud industry, with high ethics and I do not appreciate this assassination of Black haircare.

My father would be a soldier in this attack. We have worked countless years and have amassed the most extensive and invaluable texture enhancement scientific data in the industry to date. Black haircare is leading in this regard. Our research is rooted in Afro-textured [hair] science, these findings are sound research that show a different picture on the overall health risks for Black women who relax.

We do have a lot of work to do, however. My legacy will be to return Black haircare to its glory era, the one that I grew up in, the industry that has and should continue to make Black America economically sovereign to create its own version of the American dream.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Rep. Barbara Lee Inquiring About Barriers to Capital for Minority Cannabis Businesses

Don't Miss

Giving Back, While Giving Thanks

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of September 2 – 8, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of September 2 – 8, 2026

Published

3 days ago

September 7, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Black History

Jackie Wright Champions Bay Area Stories, Filmmakers and Cultural Institutions

As an award-winning communications professional, Wright has worked with corporations, nonprofits, government agencies, educational institutions, artists, and community organizations. In 2026, she expanded that work by launching an introductory public relations class for small businesses and nonprofits, offering practical tools for gaining visibility, shaping messages and building productive relationships with the media.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 30, 2026

Post News Group

Jackie Wright of Wright Enterprises. Photo courtesy of Wright Enterprises.

By Carla Thomas

Jackie Wright has spent more than two decades helping people, organizations and communities understand the power of a well-told story.

As founder and president of Wright Enterprises, a San Francisco-based strategic communications and public affairs firm, Wright has built a career spanning journalism, public relations, media relations, crisis communications, community engagement and multimedia storytelling.

Wright’s commitment to storytelling is also deeply personal. She wrote and co-directed the 15-minute documentary, “Love Separated in Life…Love Reunited in Honor,” which chronicles the story of her parents, Specialist Five (S5 Wyley Wright Jr. and Ouida Fay McClendon Wright. Her father, a U.S. Army helicopter crew chief, died in Vietnam in 1964 while serving as an honor guard during a visit by then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Decades later, Wright and her siblings had their father exhumed from a segregated cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida, and their mother moved from her burial place in Georgia so the couple could be reunited at Arlington National Cemetery in 2014.

The family journey later took Wright and her sister to Vietnam, where they discovered the former military compound that had been named in honor of their father and another fallen soldier. The documentary, centered on love, war, family, racial understanding, and remembrance, earned festival recognition at screenings.

“It was quite an honor to learn about my family’s history and share it on film,” said Wright.

That filmmaking experience complements Wright’s longstanding advocacy for independent cinema. She has served as a media partner and brand ambassador for Bay Area film festivals, including the San Francisco Black Film Festival, Oakland International Film Festival, and the Durban International Film Festival in South Africa.

“It’s important to help filmmakers and underrepresented stories reach broader audiences,” said Wright.

Whether promoting a neighborhood organization, championing an independent filmmaker or preserving her own family history, Wright has remained consistent. Through Wright Enterprises, she has turned communications into both a profession and a form of community service, telling stories that might otherwise go unheard.

“Our stories are an integral part of our history, and our history is not only American history, but worldwide,” she said.

Post News Group

Posts by Post News Group

Black History

BOOK REVIEW: Every Inch of a Lady

“Born, bred, toasted, buttered, jellied, and honeyed in Harlem” in 1937, Audrey Smaltz was a force to be reckoned with almost from the time she could walk. Her parents imbued confidence in her; they nurtured her creativity and sent her to charm school, but they never allowed her to create a stir.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 30, 2026

Post News Group

Audrey Smaltz' latest book "Every Inch a Lady" with Alina Mitchell, is a colorful autobiographical story following a young Black model's pursuit to become a fashion designer in New York City during the pre-Civil Rights era.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Audrey Smaltz with Alina Mitchell, foreword by Michael Kors, Copyright: c.2026, Publisher: Amistad, SRP: $27.99, Page Count: 256 Pages, Snaps, zippers, buttons, ties.

Toss that garment on, pull it up, wrap it around; you know what you like and how to wear it. The color is perfect for your skin tone, and the fabric enhances your figure. Yep, you always look your best and, as in the new book “Every Inch a Lady” by Audrey Smaltz (with Alina Mitchell), that best is fabulous.

“That,” says Smaltz, “is not what ladies did.”

By the time she was a teenager, Smaltz was modeling for New York City designers. Shortly thereafter, she started working for a married man with whom she had an affair, and whom she loved very much. She broke up with him, attended college, and worked a series of jobs that taught her about fashion and jobs that didn’t seem to fit her. An ill-fated marriage took her to Chicago, where she ultimately landed a position that sent her to work in Ebony magazine’s New York office.

Working at Ebony was a career-changer, in a way. Smaltz traveled the world and learned more about fashion, but she didn’t exactly get along with her boss.

Finally, seizing an opportunity, Smaltz decided to launch her own company, Audrey Smaltz, Inc., a “fashion production business,” but she couldn’t get any designers to take a chance on her. Undaunted, she reorganized, re-branded, hit the streets, and knocked on doors until she finally found one client, which led to many others.

Through it all, her personal life was a whirlwind. She dated “more men than you can shake a book at,” settling down occasionally, briefly. Fashion had always been her first love, but she accidentally found real love, “the love of a woman,” at a leadership course…

There’s an old saying that writers need to add lots of “color” into their stories. Read a little of “Every Inch a Lady,” and you’ll notice immediately that author Audrey Smaltz (with Alina Mitchell) quite literally takes that to heart by mentioning nearly every color of the spectrum here. Hmm.

That oddity aside, Smaltz is a wonderfully lively storyteller, speaking with the energy of a woman much younger to the heart of anyone who loves fashion. That glee extends to collectors of vintage clothing, who will be delighted to read about the industry long ago and the way things worked then. Smaltz says she experienced racism, which is not unusual for pre-Civil Rights America, but doors were surprisingly closed for other reasons that will astound anyone who’s savvy about the fashion industry, even today.

There’s quite a bit of name-dropping in this book, but most of it belongs in the anecdotes, so you likely won’t mind. If you’re a fashionista, too, find “Every Inch a Lady,” and snap it up.