I can’t quite pinpoint the moment I decided I couldn’t keep working full time and running Kids Off the Block in my spare time. For one long, exhausting year, I tried to juggle both. I tried to give my clients my full attention, even though I would rather have been in my living room listening to the boys show off their latest rap or in my van driving the girls to dance at a basketball halftime show. I stayed up most of the night listening to young people pour out their hearts and fussing at them to stop running around with the gang that was trying to recruit them.
KOB wasn’t just a hobby. It never had been. I was serious about it from the moment I first heard the original ten kids tell me their problems on my living room floor. But I also hadn’t expected it to require my attention twenty-four hours a day. When I first asked those kids to come inside my house, I never imagined I’d have teenagers sleeping on my living room floor, calling me in the middle of the night, and meeting me outside the salon every day. KOB went from ten kids to seventy-five in a matter of months. I was basically working two jobs—but one of them took up three-quarters of my day.
Balancing KOB and doing hair, not to mention attempting to be a wife and mother, was killing me. When I was with the kids, I felt this overwhelming sense of euphoria. I felt giddy, like I was a teenager too. But behind the salon chair, my back ached, my feet throbbed, my whole body cried out for rest.
I was wearing myself out to keep working at my mom’s salon, and for what? I didn’t like doing hair. Truth was, I wasn’t even good at it. My clients kept coming back because they liked talking to me, not because I was particularly skilled. The money was good, but I was tired of working a job I didn’t care about just for the paycheck.
KOB was my passion. I knew without a doubt that God had called me to help these kids. I felt in my bones that it was time for me to put down my scissors and devote all my time to KOB. I didn’t know how we’d get by without my paycheck, but I was willing to take the risk. KOB was worth it. I’ll figure all that out later, I told myself. I know the Lord will take care of it.
Telling my mom I was done styling hair was the easiest conversation I’d ever had. She practically exploded with pride and hugged me, telling me I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do. Telling James was a different story. He’d finally forgiven me for selling the TV and even stopped complaining about his house being the home of KOB. Now here I was again, making huge decisions without discussing them with him. I know I should have talked to him first. But at the time, I felt this intense urgency to make KOB my full-time job. I knew I’d never convince him to say yes if I ran it by him first. So I didn’t.
I meant to break it to him gently that night after most of the kids had left for the day and the others were asleep. I figured I’d rub his shoulders, get him all relaxed, and then tell him the news. But like usual, I was giddy and hyped up after being with the kids all evening. I was babbling on about how Isiah was making friends and coming out of his shell when it just slipped out.
“That’s why I can’t keep doing hair and doing KOB,” I said. “These kids need all of my attention.”
James frowned at me suspiciously, his eyebrows raised. “Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t,” I said slowly. “And I’m not.”
“What do you mean you’re not?”
“I mean, I quit today. I told my mama I can’t do it anymore.”
There was that look again—the same look I’d seen the day I sold the TV. Out came the curse words and the word divorce.
I was sick of feeling alone, like I was battling against my own husband, when all I was doing was following God’s call on my life. So this time, I fought back.
“You need to shut up, talking to me like that,” I snapped. “Why can’t you just support me?”
James is always loud, but for a moment I was afraid he’d wake the whole neighborhood. “What you mean, I don’t support you?” he shouted. “I drive these kids to school. I let them take over my house. And don’t you forget my TV paid for their computers. I put up with all of it. And now you just go and quit a good job without even talking to me.”
“I’m just following my heart.”
“Well, that ain’t gonna feed us,” he shot back.
“Don’t you believe in God?” I searched his face, looking for any hope and understanding at all. I didn’t find it. “God’s gonna take care of us.”
“Yeah, but God didn’t tell you to be a fool.”
Oh boy, I thought. What did he have to say that for?
I must confess, I said a few curse words in response. I had to ask the Lord for forgiveness later. The argument exploded into an all-out blowup, with both of us saying nasty things we’d regret later. I don’t like to go to bed angry, but I sure did that night.
For days, James and I didn’t speak beyond a “What’s for dinner?” or “What time you getting home today?” I tried fixing chicken just the way he liked it for dinner and letting him watch his Sanford and Son reruns without complaining. He wasn’t letting me off the hook that easily.
James couldn’t avoid KOB. The kids were there as soon as he walked in the front door from work and sometimes even when he woke up in the morning. And when I needed him to drive someone home or pick up a kid from school, he never said no.
If the kids knew he didn’t want them there, they never let on.
“Hey, Mr. J!” they’d yell.
After the first few months, instead of walking straight to the bedroom, he’d hang around the living room and talk with the boys. They’d lay out laughing, listening to James’s Mississippi drawl as he said, “What’s up, maaaaan?” dragging out the A sound.
Eventually, it was the kids that wore him down. I knew it would be. The more they yelled his name and laughed at his jokes, the more James hung around. These city kids thought my country man said the most outrageous stuff, like, “Give me five on the black-hand side!”
Before long, James was singing Luther Vandross along with the boys and crooning the old songs by The Whispers he’d wooed me with years before. Once, he even danced just like Rick James as he sang “Super Freak” right there in our living room. He had those kids rolling like he was a professional comedian. I felt hopeful. James was warming up to the kids. Was our yearlong standoff finally coming to an end?
One night, I walked in the front door to the scent of garlic and tomatoes. There was James, in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, cooking up a big batch of spaghetti and meatballs.
“Food’s ready,” he said matter-of-factly. I could tell he was proud of himself. But for once, I had no intention of taking him down a peg. I was too busy trying not to burst into tears of joy. James was on his feet all day long fixing cars at the body shop. He was tired too. Instead of complaining that I was out running around with the kids and not making him dinner, he took over without saying a word. He stood behind the stove, dishing up plates of pasta and hollering at the kids to wash their hands, and I finally felt like he was standing behind me and KOB. Maybe we wouldn’t fight over this forever. Maybe I wouldn’t be on my own anymore. Maybe, just maybe, we’d be partners in this together.
“Oooh, Mr. James, that’s good!” Jamal called out from the table.
“You mean you stopped talkin’ long enough to eat?” James shouted back. Even Jamal couldn’t help but laugh at that one.
From then on, it wasn’t unusual for the kids and I to come home to steaming pots of chicken and gravy or platters of Dagwood sandwiches. We’d be outside and hear the sizzle and crackle of hot oil moments before the scent of fried chicken drifted through the window. It was all I could do to keep them from snatching chicken from the pan.
When he wasn’t in the kitchen, James was throwing loads of laundry in the washing machine and folding pants and shirts for kids who didn’t have clean clothes. He’d buy shoes on his way home for a boy who had worn through the soles of his sneakers.
Then Aisha let it slip that James fixed cars and knew how to build a house from the ground up. Those kids wouldn’t leave him alone after that. Our phone just about rang off the hook.
“Mr. James, can you fix my mama’s car?”
“Mr. James, can you come fix our cabinets?”
“Mr. James, we got water coming in our basement!”
James grumbled as he tied on his work boots and loaded his toolbox into the car, but I could tell his chest was a little puffed out. I wasn’t the only person these kids needed. They needed him too.
He never asked for payment, but he didn’t do the work for free. Anybody who asked for help had to work right next to him and learn to do it themselves. James always came home fussing about how Richard couldn’t tell an engine from a transmission or how Corey didn’t know how to hold a hammer.
“Diane, do you know they didn’t even know what a thermostat was?” he yelled. At least it sounded like he was yelling, even if he didn’t mean to. “They didn’t even know what a stairwell was called!”
“Well, how are they supposed to know that if nobody ever told them?” I said, trying not to laugh.
James grumbled and nodded. “Well, I guess you got a point.”
The kids saw through his gruff exterior. They’d fuss and argue when James went after them for breaking the front light in our van or bending a nail when they tried to hammer. But a moment later, they’d ask him to say one of his Mississippi sayings, and they’d all be rolling on the floor laughing. He was in the center of the action, joking with the boys or explaining how to change a tire. He gets it, I thought. He knows why we have to help these kids. He loves them just as much as I do.
For months, I’d prayed that God would soften my husband’s heart, that we wouldn’t be adversaries anymore, that he would be just as committed to KOB as I was. I shouldn’t have been surprised that God answered my prayer. It wasn’t His first answer, and it most definitely wouldn’t be His last.
When I was a young woman, I would rather have died than let anyone know I couldn’t handle something on my own. Once, when I was married to my first husband, my children and I lived on nothing but rice for a week. We didn’t have any money in the bank to shop at the grocery store, and even though my mom would have been more than willing to help, I refused to ask her or anybody else for a dime. That’s not how my mama raised me, I thought. I ain’t asking nobody for nothing.
Fast forward to 2004, and my life was a different story. Now that we were living only on James’s salary, all pride was out the window. James and I could get by. I knew we’d figure it out. But I wanted to do more for these kids. I wanted them to have matching T-shirts when we cheered at rallies and visited community groups. I wanted a few more basketball goals now that the one we had was already worn out. I wanted more computers so kids wouldn’t have to wait as long for a turn to do their homework. I wanted my kitchen stocked with lunch meat, bread, and chips so I could always feed anybody who was hungry. And when I closed my eyes at night, I dreamed of the thing I wanted most—a building to hold KOB. My house was bursting at the seams with the dozens of young people who came through every day. James and I had no privacy, and everything we had, from the furniture to the floors, was worn out from overuse.
Somebody’s gotta help me, I thought. Somebody has to see that what we’re doing is important. Somebody will want to get involved.
My first stop was my alderman’s office. Everybody said the man who ran our ward for the Chicago City Council had money he could distribute in the community however he saw fit. So I sat in his office waiting for him. Day after day, I kept showing up. I told him about kids who didn’t have shoes, kids whose families’ lights were turned off, kids who needed a good, hot meal.
After a while, the man got sick of me. He couldn’t turn me away. After all, I was his constituent. But he’d make me wait a good, long while, hoping I’d give up and leave. This man did not know that Diane Latiker is stubborn as a mule. I could see him peek through a crack in his office door, take one look at me, and close the door.
“He’ll be out in a few minutes,” his secretary would say with a smile.
“Okay,” I’d say. Minutes would tick by. He wouldn’t budge from his office.
“Could you please ask him about what time he’ll be out?” I’d finally ask.
She’d disappear behind his door only to reemerge with the same line. “He’ll be out in a few minutes.”
But once I was finally seated in his office, it was never the magic solution I’d hoped for. He’d listen to my long list of problems, nodding without ever offering a solution. One day, I’d finally had it.
“You’re just not gonna help, are you?” I said, my arms crossed.
The man held my gaze. “Yeah, and that’s why you’re mad, because I won’t do what you want me to do and say what you want me to say.”
“Oh really?” I locked my eyes on his, daring him to keep talking.
“Do you know somebody got shot right by my office just the other day?” He spun in his chair and frowned at me. “You’re out there helping people just like that. You got nothing but gangbangers and thugs in your program. The best thing I can do for them is lock them up.”
I couldn’t move. This man was supposed to represent my neighborhood. Yet now he was telling me the kids I’d come to love were dangerous, disposable, not worth saving. Nothing I could say would make a lick of difference to him. I gathered my purse and walked out of the office.
Meanwhile, I came up with what I believed was a brilliant plan to help KOB. I would write a letter to Oprah. Her talk show ruled daytime television, her book club determined which novel would be the next bestseller, and anything on her “Oprah’s Favorite Things” list suddenly became impossible to find in stores. As far as I was concerned, Oprah was the queen. If Oprah knew what I was trying to do, she would help me.
My heart raced with excitement as I put pen to paper and scrawled out my dreams for KOB and how I wanted to help get the young people of Roseland off the street and into college and the workforce. I told her how desperately I needed somebody of her stature to help me guide these kids. I asked for a building, a van, computers, everything short of the moon. The assistant who read my letter probably thought, “This lady is crazy.”
Two weeks went by without a response. I wasn’t deterred. I sat down and wrote another letter. And when that didn’t get a response, I wrote another. I felt like a kid writing to Santa Claus, refusing to believe the mounting evidence that he wasn’t real. The chances of my letter ever making it past the workers sifting through Oprah’s piles of mail and onto Oprah’s desk were extremely slim.
I gotta get real, I finally told myself. Maybe Oprah isn’t the answer. Maybe there are other resources out there.
I started with the churches. I walked up the block to St. John Missionary Baptist Church and talked to the pastor about what we were trying to do for the kids in our neighborhood. Next thing I knew, he took a special offering for us one Sunday. Metropolitan Baptist Services members donated notepads and journals.
Then I met a man named Joseph Strickland, who turned out to be the man. He knew everybody in the nonprofit world and didn’t waste any time introducing me to people, telling organizations what I needed, and stopping at my house to visit with the kids. That man was incredible. I also met a young man named Syron Smith, who was also working to stop violence throughout Chicago and was just getting started forming his organization, National Block Club University. Syron connected me to the people funding his group and helped me get funds from them too.
I was blown away. I knew how hard it was to find funding. These people could have kept their funders a secret and left me to fend for myself. Instead, they took me under their wing. Because of them, I started partnering with groups like Magic and CeaseFire that also worked with Chicago’s young people. I had money to buy food, shoes, pants, coats, whatever the kids needed. I could tell that the group leaders thought I was unorganized, and they weren’t wrong. I may have been a year into this, but I was still smack in the middle of figuring things out. So when I met group leaders who seemed like they had it going on, I latched on to them. I watched how they ran their programs, tracked their outcomes, and reached out to the community.
But everywhere I went, I heard the same criticism. “These kids are dangerous,” I was told by everybody from pastors to nonprofit founders. It turned out, most people wanted to work with the “good kids,” the ones staying in school and out of gangs, the ones who were less risky, easier to love. Some organizations—even churches—refused to work with me because of who I helped.
I thought of DaJuan selling drugs to put food on the table for his family, Isiah joining a gang to walk to school without constantly looking over his shoulder. Aren’t these exactly the kinds of kids we should be helping? I thought. Why are people treating them like they’re throwaway kids?
Arguing was a waste of my time. So I kept my mouth shut. I knew there was only one way to change their minds. I’m gonna prove them wrong, I told myself. I’m gonna show up for these kids. I’m gonna show them there’s another way to live beyond the streets, beyond the gangs, beyond the violence. I’ll show everybody.