How Fayetteville’s ‘original loc lady’ started her natural hair academy

Airaina Griffith-Knight recalls her father’s words as she struggled to maintain her footing as a student at Winston-Salem State University. “College ain’t no place for a Black girl,” he told her.

Griffith-Knight wasn’t discouraged. As she saw it, those were fighting words, more motivational than discouraging. She was smart and ambitious. She had earned scholarships and had been accepted at several colleges.

Then life got in the way.

She enjoyed braiding hair and when her friends and other students discovered her talent for it, college fell by the wayside as she devoted more time to styling than studying.

“I actually flunked out four or five times,” she said. “But every time I did, I heard my father’s voice telling me that college wasn’t for Black girls, and I’d say to myself, ‘Well, Dad, I’m at college with a bunch of Back girls, and I love it.’”

At the time, Griffith-Knight had no way of knowing that the interruptions, false starts and missteps would be her roadmap to a successful career. Today, hAirlooms Academy, a natural hair and braiding academy she started in 2020, is a thriving part of Fayetteville’s business landscape. She is building community and paving a pathway to new careers for others. She also owns the salon NUWBNS Hair Rejuvenation Clinic on Ramsey Street in Fayetteville. NUWBNS stands for “naturals, unisex locks, weaves, braids, nails and skin care,” Griffith-Knight said.

Monique Singletary, a new student at hAirlooms, was attending Fayetteville State University when she met Griffith-Knight, who was giving students a price break on her styling services.

“She knew students didn’t have a lot of funds, and she gave us discounts so we could maintain our hair,” Singletary said.

Singletary, a violinist who performs locally, is a music instructor at FSU enrolled at hAirlooms for personal enrichment and growth. She says she has struggled with her hair since she was a little girl.

“My auntie would press my hair out and it would be beautiful for like 10 minutes, and then I would get to running and playing,” she said. “After that, my hair would just revert back to the way it was.”

As for becoming a stylist, Singletary has no plans, but she’s keeping an open mind. The chance to dip her toes into a new profession where she is an absolute beginner is exciting, and she views going to school as an opportunity to relate to her own students and their new beginnings too.

Elevating natural hairstyles

For Black women, hair has historically played a key role in their identity, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. But over time, their hairstyles have been a source of discrimination, leading women to chemically alter their hair’s texture or cover their natural hair with wigs or extensions.

In 2019, the National Urban League, Color of Change, the Western Center on Law and Poverty and the Dove corporation, co-founded the CROWN Coalition to advance anti-hair discrimination legislation called The CROWN Act, which stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.

The CROWN Act has been introduced in Congress and 27 states have passed versions of it.

While North Carolina has not passed a CROWN Act, former governor Roy Cooper has, in the past, issued annual proclamations recognizing CROWN Day on July 3 in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Griffith-Knight has worked tirelessly to ensure that the state’s cosmetology license standards include criteria for natural hair care and styling to elevate the professional stature of stylists and to make natural hairstyles more acceptable in the workplace. These styles include braids, twists, locs and coils.

The N.C. General Assembly created the State Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners in 1933 to establish and maintain sanitary and professional standards for cosmetic arts. Today, the board licenses over 80,000 individuals and businesses. More than 75 years later, the N.C. General Assembly passed the 2009 House Bill 291, aka the Natural Hair Care Licensure/Cosmetic Art Act, sponsored by the late state senator Earline Parmon of Winston-Salem, an amendment to the Cosmetic Art Act to provide licensure for natural hair braiding.

At FTCC, Griffith-Knight worked with Amy Slate McLamb, dean of career and community enrichment, and its Corporate & Continuing Education department, creating the first natural hair care curriculum for the community college in the early 2000s. 

Cosmetology Department Chair at FTCC Juanita Williams created the Natural Hair Care Curriculum for the state in 2019, which was adopted by the North Carolina Community College System, and started the program at FTCC in fall 2020.

At home in Fayetteville

Griffith-Knight arrived in Cumberland County about 35 years ago as a wide-eyed 9th grader who had grown up on the hard streets of New York City in the 1970s. By the time she was 14, she was traveling across all five boroughs by bus and train and was an endless source of worry for her mother.

“I am a Brooklyn girl,” Griffith-Knight said. “My mom raised an independent daughter and there were times when she didn’t know where I was because we didn’t have mobile phones or tracking devices back then.”

Her mother sent her adventurous daughter to Hope Mills to live with her father. She thrived as a student at South View High School, joining the track team and cheerleading squad. She loved spending Friday nights at football games.

“It was a whole new world where children were treated like they were important,” she said. “I was immersed in the small-town culture.”

Later, as a WSSU student, she relied on her braiding business as a source of financial support while resolving to focus on her classes. A car accident was the final blow that sent her back to Cumberland County, where she enrolled at Fayetteville State University.

She put off college one last time to get her cosmetology license at Fayetteville Beauty College to practice her craft in a campus hair salon.

In 1999, Griffith-Knight graduated from FSU with a degree in psychology and went on to earn dual master’s degrees in educational administration and adult education from Central Michigan University.

She launched her teaching career at Miller-Motte College in Fayetteville and rented booth space at a local barbershop where she slowly began to build her business and cultivate a clientele.

Starting a business

Long known around the community as “the original loc lady,” in 2020 Griffith-Knight decided the time was right to start her own natural hair academy.

“I wanted to teach braiding techniques, a skill that’s traditionally passed down from aunts to nieces, mothers to daughters, cousins to cousins and sisters to sisters,” she said. “That’s why I named the academy hAirlooms as a play on words.”

Griffith-Knight chose a distinctive stone building on Pamalee Drive for hAirlooms, and did much of the remodeling herself.

The cozy school is both inviting and functional. It is divided into four sections, including a lobby, a clinical room lined with chairs and sinks, a classroom, and a full-service salon where students practice hair care and styling on real clients under instructors’ supervision.

State law calls for 300 hours of cosmetology instruction for natural hair specialists. hAirlooms tuition costs $3,000 plus fees for books and supplies. Scholarships are available, and classes are limited to eight students.

Nature Young is retired from the U.S. Army and recently enrolled in hAirlooms. Like her classmate, Monique Singletary, she’s seeking personal development and connections.

In the Army, Young always wore her hair pulled back in a tight bun and didn’t know how to style her natural hair. One day she saw a billboard advertising hAirlooms, and made a mental note to learn more, but never followed through.

Then fate stepped in.

“I went to my daughter’s school, and one of the women had won a $1,000 scholarship to hAirlooms that she couldn’t use, so she gave it to me,” Young said. “I was enjoying the retired life, but when I learned the 300 hours of classwork are flexible and can be completed in three months, I realized it was a goal I could see myself achieving.”

Changing lives

Salons and barber shops are often more than places to go for a new look.

They serve as gathering spaces where people can socialize, feel safe and seek assistance when they fall on hard times.

“I’ve met women who’ve been in abusive relationships, who didn’t have proper housing or transportation, and I’ve seen how education can give them a means of taking care of themselves and their children,” Griffith-Knight said.

hAirlooms graduate Vickie Rooks of Fayetteville says Griffith-Knight is one of the few people in her life who has never given up on her, even when she was ready to give up on herself. As a single mom, Rooks provided for her kids as best she could until she met Griffith-Knight and enrolled in the academy.

It was a life-changing decision.

“Where I come from, I had to make life work, and it has been a struggle,” Rooks said. “Now, I don’t have to struggle anymore, because I have a career that’s consistent and I’m doing much better.”

She added that she has written down her goals and dreams and for the first time, the future looks bright. She’s studying now to become an instructor.

“Nobody has ever invested anything in me as far as time or money,” she said. “I never thought I was worth anything and now I’m better off than I’ve ever been in my whole life.”

Those words are like music to Griffith-Knight’s ears.

“I want to be that person who can lead and guide others, and when I meet people that have virtually nothing and believe this course might be their last hope, I won’t let them fail,” she said. “I’ll stay right there with them, and I’m always overjoyed when they succeed.”

For Singletary, learning how to style natural hair means empowerment.

“Hair is such a fundamental part of a woman,” she said. “If our hair is pulled together, we can conquer the world.”

Read CityView Magazine’s “The Women’s Issue” March 2025 e-edition here.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article did not provide full context around how FTCC and the North Carolina Community College System adopted its natural hair care curriculum. This process also involved FTCC’s Amy Slate McLamb, dean of career and community enrichment, and Juanita Williams, cosmetology department chair, as well as the Corporate & Continuing Education department. This article has been updated with the complete information. CityView apologizes for this error.