Most people think freedom starts with a document. America Newton proved it starts with a decision. In the 1870s, a formerly enslaved Black woman packed up her young daughter and went west into the California mountains — not for a man, not for a family legacy, but to build one. She landed near a rough gold-mining town called Julian, where the streets were dust, the power belonged to white men, and nothing about the environment was designed for her survival, let alone her success. While most people clung to what felt familiar, America did something wilder: she built infrastructure. She opened a laundry that kept miners and townspeople in clean clothes — in a camp where hygiene, order, and basic dignity depended on women’s unpaid labor. Her business didn’t sit on the sidelines of the town; it helped hold the town together. And then she did the part everybody forgets to mention: America Newton claimed land. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 Records remember her as a homesteader whose name became tied to local property and landmarks in the Julian area — a Black woman, formerly enslaved, now associated with acres in her own right in the California backcountry. Her presence and personality were so strong that the community talked about her for decades after. Welcome to Day 16 of Deleted History: Black women they prayed you’d never learn about. America didn’t ask, “Will they accept me?” She asked, “What do they need that I can own?” She turned a hostile environment into a hungry market, a service into essential infrastructure, and risk into land. If you’re a Black woman expert sitting in an industry that wasn’t built for you, America’s blueprint is simple: Stop waiting for perfect conditions. Find the underserved market everyone else is scared of. Build the thing they can’t function without — and tie your name to assets, not just effort. I’m Ashley Kirkwood — over $11M in sales, two-time Inc. 5000 CEO, and in the 2% of Black women-owned businesses with full-time W‑2 employees and millions in annual revenue.

https://open.substack.com/pub/speakyourwaytocash/p/luxury-travel-with-kids-what-i-wish?r=51g84r&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

We Went Back… This is our first apartment as a couple…we lived on the third floor. When we lived here over a decade ago, about 12 years ago, we were on food stamps. We’re in Chicago for a few days, and Chris had the idea to visit our old apartment. The moment he suggested it, I felt a wave of emotion. That apartment held so many memories—good, hard, real. It’s where we lived when we were just starting out. I was studying for the LSAT. I took two trains and a bus to get to work. Chris was driving a 1998 Mitsubishi Galant to his job at Chicago Public Schools. All of our furniture—aside from maybe a couple of pieces—was free. Craigslist finds. We paid $550 a month in rent, $575 with parking. That was our world. Today, we drove down the same streets we used to travel every day, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl who used to live there… about the couple we were back then. We had no idea. We had no idea that the day-to-day decisions we were making in that tiny apartment would one day lead us to a life we never imagined. We didn’t know we’d go from a $575-a-month apartment to a 6,500-square-foot home. We didn’t know that working multiple jobs and putting our honeymoon on hold would one day turn into being able to travel together freely, to celebrate our love in whatever way we chose. We didn’t know we’d be parents to a beautiful little girl. We didn’t know that one day, we’d start a business together—one that would grow into a multimillion-dollar company, one that wouldn’t pull us apart but would actually bring us closer. We didn’t know that a single idea we believed in would change everything. And yet, I don’t look back at that time with pain. Not even a little. I remember the joy. I remember the laughter. We would sit on the couch for hours watching Heroes. We used to make fresh smoothies from the mangoes sold by the man on the street. We didn’t even have a headboard—we slept on a bedframe with a mattress—but we were happy. Really happy. I was so in love with my husband. We had just gotten married when we moved into that apartment, less than a year in. And it didn’t matter where we lived. I was just so grateful to be his wife.