HerStory- LaQue'isha Sheniqua Dashquanda Jackson, Triumph & Tribulations. Part One.

The "Grounded in the Stars" True Backstory.

By now, everyone has heard about, and seen, the new artistic icon to grace Times Square New York… but do you know the true story behind this now famous woman?

Born on August 28th (“Emmett Till Day” for some) of 1979, LaQue'isha Sheniqua Dashquanda Jackson, was the newest edition to her East Side Harlem family. She never knew her real father, although she believes that he is the man that her and her mother visited at Riker’s Island, once, when she was just three years old. His name was Sherman “Oaks” Jackson, and he died in prison, from AIDS, just 6 months later. Although he told his family and friends that he caught it from “shooting up that black tar H”, and not from “being some punk”, most agreed that it was probably an equal measure of both.

LaQue’isha’s mother was a strong, independent, black woman, struggling to make it in a man’s world, made that much more difficult because of her 6 children, their multiple, unreliable, unhelpful, and seldom present fathers, endless professional challenges, her fondness for the newly developed crack cocaine, and her dangerous “make ends meet” side job of hooking in her 118th and Madison neighborhood.

Sadly, just three days after LaQue’isha’s 11th birthday, her mother, 35 year old Henrietta “Harlem Booty” Davi’Deena Washington, lost her life to a combination of rotgut malt liquor, heavy crack usage, and a trick gone bad, resulting in her sleeping it off on the train tracks, to a disastrous and closed casket end.

Thus, little LaQue’isha Jackson, 11, Sheronda Deh’LaRay Jefferson, 13, Fillipino JoQuandis a.k.a. “Flip Rock” Washington, 15, Martin Luther Lincoln Washington, a.k.a. “MLK Day”, 17, and the big sister of the family, Earthy Windy Fiery Livingston, 18, we left to fend for themselves in this diverse, but dangerous neighborhood that they called home.

Obviously, the three girls, Earthy, Sheronda, and LaQue’isha, began working the same streets and alleys that their mother had introduced them to; Normally when she “needed a fix”. The two boys, “Flip Rock” and “MLK Day” turned to street level drug sales, and although they did make some money, they mostly squandered it on drugs, booze, and unauthorized dice games.

Part Two coming soon.