When teens are told NOT to do drugs, they should be given something TO DO. Jackie Baker saw that gap and filled it using grant money to create a pizzeria, a cookie company, a candy store, and a performance troupe all run by teenagers. The effect of her work is multiplying across generations as many of those students received scholarships and are now in jobs that uplift many in the same community.
When teens are told NOT to do drugs, they should be given something TO DO. Jackie Baker saw that gap and filled it using grant money to create a pizzeria, a cookie company, a candy store, and a performance troupe all run by teenagers. The effect of her work is multiplying across generations as many of those students received scholarships and are now in jobs that uplift many in the same community.
https://www.younginvestorsgroup.org/
(Cheerful, synthetic beats)
Nichole Hill: After hearing the influence of Mrs. Jackie Baker, we just had to meet her for ourselves. This Queen of Community, unsurprisingly, doesn’t travel alone. She arrives with Jimmie White, who helped her run programing, and two of her (now grown) mentees. For this interview we are going to focus on her–but its obvious that generational impact doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Mrs. Jackie: Well, I, I grew up in Norfolk, not too far from here. And went to school here. Married a guy from here. He was in the military too, he was in the Army, but we have two kids and they all grown. I worked at the Housing Authority. I retired there after about 34 years.
(Music fades out)
And, I'm going to tell you, when I went there, I started out not knowing what I wanted to do in life.
I knew I liked people, though.
But, I decided when I finished high school, I went off to a seminary because I was going to go out and be a be like a missionary.
But what I did find out, not ugly, don't mean, don't mean no harm by that, but I realized that ministers were just like we are, just everyday people. It's just their career they chose. And some may have been what we call 'God sent,' and some may have been thinking about their future and even though I may not do politics, but you still control a large group of people.
So, I can't say that I became totally disappointed, but I had a reality check on that. And so I finished there, came home, went back to Norfolk State, and decided, well, I'm going to be a teacher. From January to May, I don't know who got out the door the fastest, me or the kids. I knew then, that that wasn't what I was going to do.
And I had no clue what I was going to do then. And, lucky enough, I had a job working while I was in school, working at the Housing Authority, cleaning office, believe it or not. And I ran into the Executive Director. He made a promise. He said, if you finish school, stay focused, I will have a job for you when you finish. I took him up on his word.
And I went out to Roberts, and I started working with the community a different way. I started working with the families, but more with the youth and the families. And from that point on, I stayed. I, I loved it. I found my niche.
Now, I don't like the little teeny ones. They cry too much. But I love the middle school and then the high school.
But before I could get to them, I had to prove myself by working with their parents and their grandparents and kind of finding my way in the neighborhoods.
And I did. I did. Because I had this strong belief that, for the most part, people are basically good. Unless they show me otherwise. I had no reason to believe the worst that I heard. And I used to always tell them, "Don't worry about public housing. It's just an address. It has nothing to do with who we are and what we will become."
And one time we had a news article to come out that said that our kids were not going to make it out of high school.
And it offended me because you're talking about our Black kids. It's all public housing. And I'm saying, 'why won't they make it?' And there was all the statistics showed they won't, but who's putting together all this statistics?
And I was determined that that wasn't going to be true of their group that I was working with. They're going to graduate from high school, and they're going to go to college.
(Light cheerful music)
You can encourage kids to graduate from high school, but then what do they do after they finish that? Because nobody was encouraging college and all that, because if I didn't see you coming out of high school, I darn show didn't see you coming out of college.
And I didn't know how we were going to do it, but I knew we were going to make that happen for them. We were going to prove that article wrong. But the parents-- They, I'm not going to say they all were, you know, you always want parents to be involved in programs, but the fact that they would, would send their children to programs that we had, or encourage them to try to do some of the things that I was offering, said to me that they had made that investment that I needed.
I didn't need them to be there all the time, but I did need them. to trust enough to encourage their children to stay part of the program.
(Music lays under, progressive beats)
And then they put out this grant, "Drug Elimination", and hot doggie, we were on it! I helped write that grant, and we started off with our first million dollars. And we were good then.
We were filthy rich then. And I know most of the money was supposed to go for police. Protection in the community
And that I was not against.
But, if we wanted them to say no to drugs, then I needed to give them something to say yes to.
And hot doggie, with this money, we started Pizzeria ,where Pizza Hut and other pizza companies would not even bring pizzas to our neighborhood. So we established our own business, Pizzeria. And through Mr. White and his contact, we developed contracts with Pizza Hut where they will extend credit to the kids.
And they will start operating their own Pizza Hut slash pizzaria in the neighborhoods and we will order the pizzas that we wanted bi-weekly and we had to pay at the end of the month and we even came up with our slogan, "It's fresh, it's good, it's from the hood."
(Echo of Dr. Goodman "It's Fresh, It's Good, It's From the Hood! Yes, sir!" )
So that caught on and everybody was all happy about that.
For the younger ones. We started The Cookie Factory, where the kids, the Bowling Green Cookie Group, where they would take the Otis Spunkmeyer we got the equipment, order the cookies from it, and they would bake up the cookies in the oven.
We were already pre-made, but just cook them in the oven and sell those three for a dollar.
In Calvert, across the street, we opened up the No Limit Bookstore. I let them name their business and we started doing things like that. Each community had their own youth council, and that's where the parents became more involved because I needed adults to be the youth leaders.
Nichole Hill: These youth leaders became role models for their community.
Mrs. Jackie: I don't know if they thought they could make more money from us than the drug dealer, I never fantasized that in my head, but what I did know was that we also had, what was it, a community policing program, where we had officers assigned to each of our communities and they became part of the program.
The visibility of that kept a lot of the drug activity from coming and touching them hand on hand. And that again was through drug elimination money because of the next couple of years we got another million dollars. And so we could do more contracts like with Parks and Rec, with the police department, with ballet groups and we could even work out some employment.
(Music ends)
Anytime you have companies as big as Pizza Hut and they're refusing to come to your neighborhood to bring pizza. Made a, a big statement to the point that it got to be press known all on TV, ain't nobody going out there.
And when Pizzeria came along and they started in Roberts, you'd be surprised at the positive publicity that they start getting and the respect they started getting. For being able to set up something that was kind of good. And the thing was, and their slogan went for a long way.
People were printing it all on fliers when we would go places. I't's good, it's fresh, and it's from the hood.' The hood didn't mean negativity at that point. And that's what I wanted to get over to them was, It's just an address, baby. That's all it is. No different than my address. And we go where our parents take us.
And you can build from that.
Nichole Hill: We need to back up a minute for some context. This positive press was a welcome reprieve from some very negative stories. In 1994 a Channelos pizza delivery person was shot while delivering food in OakLeaf park. I was an elementary school at the time in VA Beach at the time and I will always remember seeing on the news how the neighbors came together to help identify the shooter, and were rewarded with a pizza party.
But Channelos, as well as other local delivery companies stopped serving that neighborhood along with 15 other public housing communities. Mrs. Jackie recognized that void- and finally had the funding to help solve for it.
Mrs. Jackie: Don't misunderstand me. That was something that you needed to be concerned about. But these kids didn't do that. I can't even remember the story well enough to tell you if it was even one of our residents, but we got blamed for it, and the kids got joked and picked on at school about it, you know, 'so these horrible people go to our school now.'
'No, they're the same people that were going to your schools. This is an unfortunate incident that happened like it happens anywhere.' What I was not gonna allow happen, and thank you, Jimmy, for all that he did. Cause he's the one who negotiated with Pizzeria, that was not I. That was, I was for blasting them, not negotiating with them.
But he, he negotiated with them to turn the tables, that what he made them, cause Pizzaria wasn't the only one, none of them would come, that he made them somehow understand why you want to, won't you be different than the rest of them, won't you show that you're trying. Now they didn't deliver, I'm not going to tell that to you, but they made it possible for all kids to, and Jimmy would take responsibility along with Norm D and them to go pick up the pizza, bring it there.
And that they would allow them, and it looked just like Pizza would get at home, to sell it and gave them the paper wrap, everything it looked like. Because it was still Pizza Hut product.
Once they started selling and it got popular like that,
The Health Department came and inspected the facility the city of Norfolk came out with, they had to have a little business license, you know. I wanted them to see, you can't just do this behind closed doors and think nobody's going to see it. You're wrong. Once you put it out there, and the papers were going to follow it, the newscasts were going to follow it, because you're saying Pizza Hut is doing something that nobody else would do.
I wanted them to see that they were being monitored by the state for the health department and the city (as) far as you have a little business license, like anybody else who run a business.
Nichole Hill: But the learning was multi-directional. Mrs. Jackie wanted to learn about their lives too.
Mrs. Jackie: Because we work with crime prevention with the police department, see, I wasn't crazy, crazy, but I needed the kids to know that I knew their lifestyle and I was okay with how--You ever been in a community where it's one way all day long when you walking through it?
About two or three o'clock in the morning? That's a whole different neighborhood. I, I couldn't believe it. And sometimes I would just show up like one of the neighbor Oakleaf Forest. One way in and one way out. So I wanted to see what life was in a community where it's one way in and one way out. Some people were cooking and grilling and carrying on like it was 12 o'clock in the afternoon.
(Sounds of laughter, outdoor night sounds)
But also, I wanted to be able to talk to the kids about what I also saw and heard when I was in there. And make sure they kept themselves safe. They did what they were supposed to do. Don't get yourself involved beyond, what your parents and, and that we want you to. So I would get Tony Mitchell pick me up.
And we would ride out. Late nights, early mornings, so I could see some of the other ones that were out there very late and I wanted to make sure that they knew you also still represent the Youth Executive Counsel, your family, the other ones in the program.
Now, you never know when I may show up, but I'm not out here to spy on you or to see what's going on. I just want to make sure that you're still in what I consider a safe environment for you and and your brothers and sisters out here.
(Music swells)
Nichole Hill: Mrs. Jackie has technically been retired for about thirty years. But she has never stopped caring for her chosen family, and they have never stopped caring for her.
Visit our website Truthbetoldcommunity.com to find out ways to get involved, and share this episode with friends.
This series was written by Jackie Glass and Hannah Sobol, edited and hosted by me, Nichole Hill, Sound Design by Trendel Lightburn, and our work has been supported by the Virginia African American Cultural Center through a grant from Virginia Tourism Corporation. Follow our work by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. We couldn’t do this without people brave enough to share their experiences, so thank you Jackie Baker, Jimmie White, Antonio Brown, and Tarea Freeman.