FROM JAIL TO NAILS
Ex-felon starting a school at her Memphis salon to train other formerly incarcerated women
In 1992, when Yolanda Johnson went to Clark Atlanta University, she didn’t care about earning a degree in business as much as she cared about getting out of Memphis.
“I only did one semester, and then, I started living the fast life in the city,” said Johnson, who began life in the Foote Homes housing project, in Memphis’ poorest zip code — 38126.
Indeed, that fast life took her far away from Memphis. Besides Atlanta, it took her to the Bahamas, where she deposited money for a drug dealer.
“He said, ‘Just take this money to the Bahamas, and deposit it into the bank for me.” Johnson recalled, “and I’m like, ‘I’m going on a trip to the Bahamas…it’ll be fun.’”
Until it wasn’t.
In 1994, at age 21 and just two years after receiving a chance at an education that could ensure her permanent escape from her impoverished childhood, Johnson’s life took a turn that could have plunged her back into it.
She was convicted on charges of money laundering and sentenced to 51 months in federal
prison.
But the schooling Johnson got as she did her time in federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, saved her from a prospect of minimum-wage jobs and survival struggles faced by many women who have prison on their resumes.
Another inmate taught Johnson how to do manicures, and she used the money on her books to buy supplies and do other inmates’ nails – who would, in turn, pay her.
“The ladies would pay for their nail services, and I just kept doing them, messing them up, doing them right,” Johnson said.
Making the vision a reality
Now Johnson is 48 and the owner of the Nail and Skin Bar on Park Avenue. She wants to teach other formerly incarcerated women how to turn their past mistakes into a trade. She’s starting a school to train them as manicurists.
And she’s doing that with the help of Adriane Johnson-williams, Girls Inc’s 2020 Woman of the Year and a dynamo when it comes to bolstering the potential of woman and girls.
Through her company, Standpoint Consulting, Johnson-williams is helping Johnson to raise money to help train six former offenders as manicurists at Johnson’s salon. Johnson-williams, who is a client of Johnson’s, said the idea of starting the school emerged as Johnson described it as a dream of hers.
“By chance, I learned that we both used to spend time in South Memphis,” said Johnson-williams, who also grew up in 38126. “Then I learned about her experience with incarceration, and all the obstacles she had to overcome to start a business.”
“When she told me her vision of doing this for other women, I said: ‘Then why aren’t you doing it?’”
And there were obstacles.
Understanding, and overcoming, obstacles
When Johnson left Kentucky, she had to finish out her sentence in a halfway house in Memphis. That required her to juggle menial jobs to pay the halfway house as she struggled to go to manicure school to get her license. Getting transportation was tough, as well.
It made Johnson understand how other women might give up. But she didn’t.
Then, when Johnson finally finished paying her debt to society, she found the space and money to open a nail salon in 2003. But because she hadn’t quite learned how to manage her finances that business failed.
And when her second attempt at opening a nail salon was on the verge of failing, the owner of the building introduced her to a mentor, Pete Mitchell of Pete Michell and Associates Inc. Insurance, who helped her establish a financial plan to save her business.
Yet as Johnson’s business thrived, she couldn’t help but think about how she could help women who didn’t catch the breaks that she caught – first by learning how to do nails and secondly, by being around people who wanted her to succeed.
“Actually, the idea came when I was hiring manicurists, and they were coming in untrained,” she said. “When I went to school (manicurist school) it was $2,500. Now, it’s $9,000. They spent all that money, but they couldn’t shape or polish. They know enough to get their license, but that’s it.
“They were losing so many clients, and I wanted to help them. But then I thought: ‘Why not help women who came from my situation?’”
Why not?
‘We need to involve people who have lived with the challenges’
According to a 2018 report by Prison Policy Initiative, an organization which tracks the impact of mass incarceration on society, Black women ex-offenders experience the highest levels of unemployment, at 43.6 percent. That compares to 35.2 percent for Black men exoffenders, 23.2 percent for white women ex-offenders and 18.4 percent for white men ex-offenders.
And, when women of color are able to get jobs, the work is often part-time, which makes it easier for many of them to give up and turn to crime again.
That’s one reason why Johnson wants to teach them a trade. While a beginning manicurist may make around $20,000, once that manicurist builds a clientele, her salary can rise to $60,000, Johnson said. Also, because a manicurist can set her own hours, even if she does work another part-time job, she can make a decent yearly income.
“They can also open up their own salons and have a real life without looking over their shoulder,” Johnson said.
Said Johnson-williams: “I think Yolanda is a great example, and in my business, one of the things I have to help people understand is that whatever problems you’re trying to solve, whatever systems you’re trying to change, we aren’t going to change them without people like Yolanda…
“We need to involve people who have lived with the challenges she has lived with, who is willing to step up, because without that experience in the room, then we’re all sitting there pretending that we know what we’re talking about.”
Yet while Johnson will ultimately offer a gift to help formerly incarcerated women get some ownership over their lives, the real gift here is how Johnsonwilliams didn’t shrug off Johnson’s ambition as a whim, but as something that could work. How Johnson-williams saw her as more than just someone doing her nails, but as someone whose work and whose struggle generated a dream.
A dream that Johnson-williams could help her realize.