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 child. Even though their mother rarely worked a steady job, the bulk of the child care fell on Blackwood. Both sisters lost their fathers before they were old enough to know them. Richard was 1 when her father died, but her mother kept a rotating door of boyfriends who were temporary figures in her life, she said.
“She’s told us that we were not wanted. She told me I was a birth-control baby, that I wasn’t supposed to be born, but the birth control failed,” Richard said.
Richard recalls being “unhappy” about the arrival of her younger brother, Daniel, when she was 4 because there “wasn’t enough food in the house already.”
Blackwood “became a mom” the moment the newborn Daniel came home snuggled from the hospital in May 2003.
“My mom had the baby, dropped off the baby, and Diamond had to take care of the baby from then on,” Richard said.
By 2007, after their mother had another girl, Blackwood would often push around the younger trio, little Jonnell and Daniel included, in a twin stroller.
“It had a back bench in the back, and I would stand there, and Diamond would just take all of us with her,” Richard said. “Wherever Diamond went, we went.”
Richard said her sister also spared her from a load of the physical abuse that they endured — beatings with whatever their mother could get her hands on to discipline them. “She just took it,” Richard recalled.
While their mother would withhold food, her older sister ensured that her younger siblings ate before she did.
“She saved my life,” Richard said, referring to Blackwood.
However, when Richard was 10, Blackwood ran away from the home she shared with her siblings after the abuse became intolerable. Richard recalled seeing her mother excessively beat Blackwood that day for coming home 5 minutes late from a summer youth program.
“Then she [the mother] went to bed that night like nothing happened,” Richard said.
Blackwood, now 31, doesn’t like to relive the trauma of the abuse that she suffered from her mother but told Atlanta Black Star that she knew that night it was time for her to get out before it became worse.
“I told her to go and not come back. I got it. It’s fine,” Richard said, adding that she also thought if Blackwood hadn’t left that night, their mother would’ve “probably killed” Blackwood.
Blackwood fled to Covenant House New York, a shelter for unhoused youth. Child protective services eventually took away her mother’s parental rights over her, and she was placed in foster care with her best friend’s mother.
“Once I escaped from her house, and I got away, and I started living my life, and then I went away to college. It’s like I put it on the back burner,” Blackwood said. “The first time I noticed that I had childhood trauma is when I had my daughter.”
Her younger sister said she went into a depression after Blackwood left, but her sister never abandoned her, often checking in with Richard over the phone. After Blackwood’s departure, her mother had three more children, and she now has 10 siblings. She has not spoken to her mother since that day, about 15 years ago.
During those years, Richard also found comfort in health care professionals at the community health clinic in Williamsburg. Her primary care doctor was also a Black woman who encouraged her and the nurses who cared for her. Richard dreamed about becoming a doctor or a nurse one day.
“I want to be the nurse that I had growing up. Just like helping little Black girls that look like me,” she said.
But after her older sister left the home, Richard took on the role of a second parent to her younger siblings even after moving over 200 miles away to attend nursing school in upstate New York. She drives back to the city to attend their events and is an active “virtual parent.”
Blackwood also remained an active support system for Richard while she attended classes each day and worked nights at a gas station, all while the older sister had a daughter to support.
In 2021, the sisters garnered the attention of the creator of the Humans of New York blog. The website and its corresponding social media pages capture images of New Yorkers and couple the photographs with short stories about their lives.
Brandon Stanton, who manages the website, would approach people on the street and ask them to take their photographs for a feature, but after the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, he asked his over 17 million followers to submit their stories. He said Blackwood and Richard stood out among the 25,000 submissions because of “the devotion and sacrifice that Diamond made to help raise her sister.”
Stanton mentioned Richard’s desire to attend nursing school, and a few followers stepped forward, offering to mentor her.
“This was not very abnormal – the Humans of New York audience is very supportive. What was abnormal was Jonell’s level of drive, dedication, and commitment. Very few people are able to seize a moment, and drive toward a goal, like she did. I am extremely inspired by her. With her willpower, there is nothing she can’t accomplish,” Stanton told Atlanta Black Star in an email.
Stanton also donated $10,000 from the Humans of New York Patreon to help Richard with education costs and other expenses. Richard also launched an online fundraiser campaign and started nursing school in May 2022.
Richard graduated from Utica University last month with a 3.7 GPA. Her goal is to become an emergency room nurse, a dream she’s poised to achieve after passing the state nursing exam.
Richard attributes her resilience and success to her older sister, Blackwood, whom she wants to repay for her sacrifices as she embarks on her nursing career.
“Now, I can give back to Diamond. Maybe I can watch her child, and she can, like, just take a break,” Richard said.
