Then select Black and White – right above the Exposure slider.
I use Lightroom exclusively for black and whites in my own workflow and shoot RAW. I took this gorgeous image- note good lighting on face and eyes? Background dark colors? Textures? All the makings of a great b&w portrait! First step is to get rid of any blinkies on the skin and clothes first by tweaking the Exposure slider. Don’t make the skin too dark. If you overexposed too much then use the Adjustment Brush and bring back the clothes with it rather than using sliders. Then select Black and White – right above the Exposure slider. Gray scale- blah…but let’s fix that! Now I go right to the Tone Curve. I select Linear from the dropdown to smooth out my contrast and ‘almost’ Curve-like pop that LR makes it’s default. Click on the Point Curve tool.