Obtaining a degree of any kind is not an easy or simple task, and for Jonnell Richard, she wouldn’t have crossed the stage on Dec. 15 if her sister had not “saved her life.”
Growing up, Diamond Blackwood and Richard dealt with years of physical and emotional abuse that left visible and long-lasting psychological scars that could’ve derailed anyone’s journey, but one sister’s courage and the other’s sacrifice helped Richard defeat the odds.
“She calls me the child she didn’t want, and I call her the mom I didn’t ask for, but I needed,” Richard told Atlanta Black Star.
The sisters grew up in the Williamsburg Houses, a New York City public housing complex in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. It consists of 20 buildings between Scholes, Maujer, and Leonard streets and Bushwick Avenue. Built in 1938, Richard says it’s one of the oldest housing projects in the city and wasn’t the best place for children to be reared.
“My building was always smelling like pee or some other things,” the 24-year-old told Atlanta Black Star. “There were drug addicts everywhere.”
Blackwood and Richard’s mother migrated to the U.S. from Jamaica the day before the elder sister was born. A teenage mother, she sent Blackwood back to her homeland when she was two weeks old to live with a woman in the community who couldn’t have children of her own. About four years later, their brother was born, and he was also sent to live in Jamaica just 30 minutes away from where Blackwood lived with another family.
They returned to America when Blackwood was 9, which initially was supposed to be a trip just to obtain their passports.
By the time Richard was born, she and her eight siblings and mother were cramped into a one-bedroom unit where they were often deprived of food. Despite the discomfort, Richard said she enjoyed bonding with her siblings.
But for Blackwood, each birth deepened her role as big sister and eldest…
Read the full article here