08 Jun ‘This Is For That Woman’: Pittsburg Mother-Daughter Duo Uplift Incarcerated Women Through Braiding Program

Host Dr. Joseph Marshall, from left, with guests Joanna Hernandez and Tatiana Hernandez on “Street Soldiers Radio” to talk about their Freedom Braiders program.

Interview, Dr. Joseph Marshall

Pittsburg mother and daughter duo Joanna and Tatiana Hernandez are the force behind the Freedom Braiders program, which teaches hairstyling to incarcerated women. In May, the program celebrated its first graduation ceremony inside Santa Rita Jail. The two spoke with host Dr. Joseph Marshall and the “Street Soldiers Radio” team June 1 on 106.1 KMEL radio about their experience.  

Below is a transcribed portion of that radio program, edited lightly for clarity.

Dr. Joseph Marshall: We went to a graduation inside Santa Rita Jail. And the graduation [was the] result of the Freedom Braiders project — an eight-week project that they did with the women there. I’ve been to a lot of graduations: college graduations, high school, kindergarten, elementary school — as a middle school teacher, I went to one like 18 years in a row. This one was surreal. This is one I wish everybody could have been at. And it’s all due to the two women sitting next to me: Joanna and Tatiana Hernandez, who put this marvelous Freedom Braider program together.

Talk about what the Freedom Braiders is first, and then tell everybody how you got the opportunity to go in there and do this marvelous program that we got to witness the graduation of.

Joanna Hernandez: Thank you for having us back. Freedom Braiders couldn’t have not been done without the amazing nine master braiders who work with us, these amazing women who I get to call my sisters.

My family and I own a barbershop in Pittsburg called A1 Barbershop. I’m also the director of strategic partnership with San Francisco Pretrial. My daughter and my husband and my son, we host these barber battles throughout the Bay Area called the Bay Area Student Barber Expo. And I needed to find my place in this industry of hair. So we started to incorporate going into the jails and giving free haircuts to unhoused [people].

One day, one of the directors of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department was saying, “We need more services for women inside San Francisco.” I was talking to some colleagues and we were like, “Let’s just do a one-day workshop on how to braid hair or just to braid their hair.” It was supposed to be a one-day thing. Believe it or not, some of their stuff in there is still running under COVID protocols. So one workshop turned into 15 weeks we were in San Francisco.

We were not just braiding; we were doing some healing and talking about, what would we say to our 15-year-old self? So I put out a call out on our expo page and say, “Hey, do I got some braiders who want to come into the jail with me?” And it was just one like story share, and that story share started the DMs, “Count me in.” These amazing nine braiders volunteered their time and came into San Francisco. And then we couldn’t just say Joanna and some braiders. So we needed to come up with a name. All of it at the end of the day was about freedom. So Freedom Braiders was born in September of 2024.  During my time in San Francisco, I was invited by [Police] Chief [Bill] Scott to the Sojourn to the Past, and I went to the Deep South with 90 police officers. I met the Santa Rita sheriff’s office staff there, and one of the braiders that came with me, she was formerly incarcerated in Santa Rita jail. I will never forget, it was introduction time, she started, “Oh, my god, Joanna, the same police that supervised me when I was locked up is here. What do I say?” She was a youth offender. She got arrested at 16 years old and was sentenced to a life sentence. She was able to get out on some law changes, and she was one of the first women to get out on a law change. She was so nervous. She goes, “Do I just say I work for BACR [Bay Area Community Resources], or do I really say who I am?” I said, “You say who you are, girl.“

JM: What are the goals when you go in there? You got this time with the young women there — what’s the plan? What’s do you want to do?

Tatiana Hernandez: I think the goal is for them to feel like they’re being seen and loved and that there’s a village here for you guys. I think that’s the main goal, love, being seen and that you have a village and we’re going to teach you these skills that you’re going to carry on for the rest of your life.

JM: You’re teaching them how to braid, number one, which is a skill that they can use when they get out.

Joanna Hernandez: It’s not just about the braiding, though, at the beginning. First, we taught to make sure you learn how to love you. That’s why the journaling is very powerful. I mean we had the women writing to their 15-year-old selves. The women had to write about their relationships with their mothers, their fathers. Write about what your obituary [would say]. What would they say about you? What would your story look like?

Everybody had to participate. They all had to come and read their obituary in front of the class. And there were times where we had to call mental health to come and intervene because some of the women couldn’t deal with it. And they even had to write letters to the children they left behind or the children that they never had.

After all that, then, we get up and we shake it off. Okay women, we cried, now let’s shake it off. Now let’s braid. Let’s heal through braiding. And then I hand it over to the master braiders. Eight weeks. Three days a week.

JM: That’s 24 sessions. I still can’t get my head around all the braiders who are volunteering with you. It’s the volunteer braiders who are coming with you to be part of the program and they come from all over the Bay Area, right?

Joanna Hernandez: They’re driving from Hayward, Oakland, Newark, Stockton, Pittsburg, Redwood City. Three days a week, 12 to 4:30. Can’t be late. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

JM: How did you and the braiders sit down and prep for the whole thing? It’s like almost like a team, right?

Joanna Hernandez: Prepping for the journal prompts was deep. We did 15 weeks, but that was kind of like [when] we didn’t really have a deep curriculum. It was just kind of let’s go with the flow. But when we got to Santa Rita, I had to really sit down and prepare the journal prompts ahead of time.

We started off with 27 women. For the first two weeks, it was drama. Deputies had to come in because they were like, I don’t like her; she don’t like me. And it was the first time ever.

Tatiana Hernandez: Also, that was the first time that jail did a mix.

Joanna Hernandez: Mixed classifications. You have people with some heavy-duty charges with someone with some petty theft. Mixed classification on charges and neighborhood. Some women excused themselves because they weren’t ready, and that was OK. Some did go home. Some went to prison.

We had a good group of monolingual Spanish-speaking women, so we had to teach the class both in English and Spanish. And we ended up with 16 amazing women braiders.

The final project was you had to learn how to braid a heart, a dollar sign or a zigzag in 30 minutes on one half of the head. So that’s what they practiced in eight weeks. You had to master that.

They surpassed that. They did the whole head during graduation. That was part of the graduation ceremony. Show what you learned. Go right now. Thirty minutes on the clock, ladies. Yeah, that’s what they heard for eight weeks. So they had to master that.

Shout out to Sgt. Silva — she gave us permission to do beauty shop day on Wednesday. The nine braiders got to braid the [incarcerated] women. They would come in looking a hot mess and leave looking fly, back to the pods. That’s how the deputized staff got to see the work that the master braiders would do. That meant a lot for them because some of them hadn’t felt that way in a long time. They were like, “Can I please go to the bathroom’” and I go, “For what?” “I just want to go see what I look like.” And you know the mirrors that they have there are like the foggy, ugly mirrors that you can hardly see. They would come back with that walk. Them coming back into the classroom after they saw what they saw in the mirror, you could feel the, “I love me, I look cute.”

So we would do the walk. Everybody would split the classroom, and they would have to go and do the little walk and show their braids.

That’s one thing I love about our group: We take care of each other.

It was one day, I think it was the one that we wrote a letter to our fathers, whether you had a good or bad relationship. Let’s write it down, let’s forgive, and let’s move on. Or you don’t even have to forgive, but just say what you want to say.

Three of the freedom braiders who came to class, they’re like, can we participate? I said, absolutely, and they started journaling, and they started crying, and then they started sharing. This is not just a healing for them [the incarcerated women], but it’s also a healing for the braiders and for me — you know I’m someone who’s been impacted by the system. It hits home and this is personal to me. Breaking cycles to generational incarceration, breaking cycles to economically driven crimes — that is my personal goal and my devotion to my community moving forward.

Lady Estell: I know that when you go in, you have a curriculum; you have a plan. Was there ever a time that you had to either modify that plan or just put that plan on hold and implement another one on the spot because of where the ladies were?

Joanna Hernandez: Well, there was this one time they were all, like, mean mugging each other. I said, “Oh, no, no. What’s going on here? We got attitudes today. Eyes are I don’t want to.” And I was like, “OK, scratch this. Circle up, ladies. We’re going to talk about it.”

We just had to have that moment to just lay it out there and that happened a couple times. We’re like, “Scratch the journal. We’re going to still write about it” — because sometimes they would run away from it. I would say, tomorrow, we’re going to write about our moms. They’re like, oh, shoot, I’m not coming — make an excuse, her head hurt. But yes, absolutely, we would change it up.

Healing happens in a circle, and so I would always make them circle up. We can’t touch each other, but let’s put our fists together. I want you to feel the love in each other, and we need to circle and talk about it.

JM: Where’d you learn these skills? First, you’ve got to be non-judgmental. Then, [to] go in there and then have all this come at you.

Tatiana Hernandez: I think she learned off her personal like life and the way she grew up.

Joanna Hernandez: I told you that it’s personal for me. I’m a mother of an incarcerated son. My son has been locked up for eight years. And I’m that mother that is going to go in there and tell them what I [wish] someone would have told him. So it’s personal.

JM: [The graduation] was very emotional. It was hard for me, seeing them have to go back when it was over, after that wonderful graduation, and then go back inside the walls. And for you and the braiders, it must have really been tough because you’ve been with them for 24 sessions and you developed this relationship with them. How hard was that? And they actually let you hug them. What was that like?

Joanna Hernandez: It was therapeutic for all of us. I mean, to me, I think that people say, Joanna, why do you do that with everything you got going on and you work in the criminal justice system? I said, well, that’s my prescription. That’s what keeps me alive and free. So, that’s why I have to continue to do this work.

Tatiana Hernandez: It’s hard for me all the time. Like my mom said, we have a personal connection to this, having a brother incarcerated. So hugging them felt like I was hugging my brother. I gave them the biggest hug, and I said, “I wish you luck on your journey.”

Joanna Hernandez: I whispered in everyone’s ear. I said, “This is for that woman, that mama.” I saw my son. I want them to see in me whoever that woman that they miss may be. I hope they felt it, and I hope that they know that we see them, and I know that people make mistakes.