Inspired by the late Supreme Court Justice Th urgood Marshall and the stories of her parents’ participation in student-led sit-in demonstrations for civil rights, Greene learned as a young girl that the law could be a force for bringing about social justice.
The civil rights struggle in the U.S. “just motivated me to think about being a lawyer and how the law can make such positive changes in our lives, and also how it can be a negative,” says Greene.
In addition to recognizing the law’s influence while growing up, Greene saw firsthand the positive impact that teachers had within her hometown of Columbia, S.C. Th e examples of her parents, grandmother, aunts and uncles, who were educators, planted the idea that she could combine teaching and law into a career.
Since 2007, aft er joining the faculty of the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, Greene has pursued the law school teaching career she dreamed about as a youngster. As a tenured professor of law and director of faculty development at Cumberland, Greene has gained national recognition for her writing and research on topics related to race, gender, and discrimination.
She has won awards at Cumberland for her teaching and research. Among the topics Greene has taught and written about include racial and gender inequality in the workplace; workplace grooming codes; comparative slavery and race relations law; historic and contemporary racial determination cases; multiracialism and the law; critical race theory; and race and gender in legal academia.
Greene’s research has been recognized for her advocacy for greater protection against racial discrimination stemming from the enactment and enforcement of workplace grooming codes. She has published three articles, “Title VII: What’s Hair (and other Race-Based Characteristics) Got to Do with It?,” “Black Women Can’t Have Blonde Hair … in the Workplace,” and “What Not to Wear in the Workplace: Hijabs and Natural Hair,” in legal journals.
“[Greene has] been certainly one of the intellectual leaders on the faculty,” says John Carroll, dean of the Cumberland School of Law. “Her publications are nationally recognized. I think probably of all the people on our faculty, she is the most sought-aft er speaker at national forums.”
