It wasn’t until his junior year of college, in 2015, that Aaron Jones decided to rebel and form his hair into dreadlocks.
He said his parents, Alvin and Vurgess Jones, had warned him that Black people had long been targeted for discrimination, ostracism or punishment in school and the workplace for wearing their natural hair texture.
But as Jones matured, his parents’ stance softened, and Jones, the star running back for the Green Bay Packers, has now grown his dreadlocks for eight years so that they reach his collarbone, the tips of the barreling twists dyed a dark blond.