Written by: Audrey Pinson, Claire Williams, Connor Groothuis, Sarah Calixto de Souza
As Julian Jackman waited in a local cafe to meet with Columbia Public Schools Superintendent Brian Yearwood and a man Yearwood told Jackman he would “hit it off” with, Lonnie Lockhart Bey was the last person he expected to walk in.
This is how Jackman describes the moment he was able to reconnect with Lonnie Lockhart Bey, whom he partnered with to open the P.E.A.C.E. and H.O.P.E. Center for Youth; their dream since meeting in a prison yard years ago.
Both local activists have founded their own projects. Jackman is the executive director of P.E.A.C.E. (People Embrace Another Choice Effectively), while Lockhart Bey is the executive director of H.O.P.E. (Helping Our People Excel). They decided to combine forces to expand their reach to the youth.
“So, when Dr.Yearwood came, it just freaked him out. Cause you know, we’re hugging and talking and catching up, and he is like, ‘You guys know each other?’ Do we know each other? Man, you’re in for a treat. But from that day on, we were inseparable,” Jackman says.
Their story began when their lives took a drastic turn, as choices made in their younger years caught up to them and resulted in their arrests. At 27 years old, Jackman was charged and sentenced for first-degree robbery; he was in prison for 17 years.
As for Lockhart Bey, he was 16 years old when he was sentenced to life without parole for first-degree murder and assault and two armed criminal actions with his co-defendant. Lockhart Bey served 26 years of the sentence in prison.
Both men decided to break the cycle into which they were born, having experienced the impact of making the wrong choices in their youth, and decided to dedicate their lives to prevent others from going down this path.
While incarcerated, Lockhart Bey enrolled in and later taught many classes revolving around rehabilitation, aiming to better himself and help those around him. He wrote curricula for some of these classes, which are now translated into the programs offered by the youth center, which include Building Healthy Relationships, Critical Change and Gang Prevention, and Dangers of Criminal Thinking.
During that time, he says he was able to discover that what he lacked was a present state of mind.
“I had to learn to be current. Always be in the moment. And if you are always in the moment, then you'll make decisions based on what's in front of you, not what's behind you. And so that's what I started to do,” Lockhart Bey says.
One of the reasons he began to change his mindset was the influences around him at the time, and he started listening to them. Clifton Davis was one of those influences, who is now also a part of the H.O.P.E and P.E.A.C.E Youth Center.
“He did 26 [years in prison] too, and we both know the law. And that's how we always connected,” Lockhart Bey says.
Lockhart Bey and Davis founded the Transitional Housing Program which is centered around helping ex-convicts find their footing when getting out of prison.
“We were running into each other's programs, so we were always around each other when I started taking programs, and I was like, wow, look at this guy, going around helping people,” Davis says.
However, the true influence of Lockhart Bey’s outlook on life during those years can be traced back to Winston Bell Bey.
“I was 16. He was older. He used to sit around at the library and work on this case,” Lockhart Bey says. “So we'd be around there, and we read a little bit about his case, and then he started bringing his Quran, and he started teaching me about different things.”
Bell Bey was the father figure Lockhart Bey missed in his formative years, and the consistency that Bell Bey offered made him realize not everybody would abandon him. The feeling of inconsistency was something Lockhart Bey felt very strongly throughout his childhood, especially when his grandfather died.
“My grandfather, that was my guy; we did everything right,” Lockhart Bey says. “He [would] take me places, he’d put me in the car and say ‘Come on, meathead,’ That's what he used to call me, and we ride, right? He died when I was 11, and it just went downhill from there because that was my stability.”
After that, Lockhart Bey became a gang member at 12-years-old and rejected his support system, which made him feel as if “his back was against a wall.”
For Jackman, though, his support system felt more like a friendship than anything else.
“My father really, to me, wasn't a father. My father was my friend. So instead of it being, ‘No, don't do that.’ He was, ‘No, let me show you how to do it better,’” Jackman says.
Raised in a family with five siblings, Jackman was brought up being the patriarch of the family, as he helped his single mother with bills and responsibilities.
“I had an actual fear. My friends aren't gonna like me if I don't do this. My dad's gonna stop loving me if I don't do this. I had these natural fears that had me motivated to do certain things that weren't right,” Jackman says.
His time in prison was what made him truly comprehend the consequences of his choices, and the wrongness he found in them disgusted him.
“I was disgusted [with] how I treated my wife, how I treated my kids, how I treated my family, how I treated people that I say I love,” Jackman says. “There's things that broke me down to my essence to make me really figure out who I am as an individual.”
The bus ride to prison is long, and Jackman didn’t understand what he would go through until the moment he actually went through it.
“Degraded, humiliated, probably broken down to your lowest form as a human,” Jackman says as he remembers those years spent there.
Those feelings made him question how anyone could get out and then resume a lifestyle that would lead them back to prison.
With that in mind, Jackman began to take classes such as Impacted Criminal Victims, Criminal Thinking, Domestic Violence and Long Distance Dads. These are the same classes he would later help rewrite and teach, so other inmates could make better choices once they’ve completed their sentences.
Richard Rollins, who is Jackman’s long-time friend and former trainee, explains how their relationship and time shared in prison impacted his life.
“[During my incarceration] I used to pray every day for someone like Julian to help me do what I wanted to do, and God answered,” Rollins says.
Jackman describes the moment his focus began to shift into also helping kids in similar positions to what he was in years ago.
“I would have guys always say this to me, ‘Man, if I was 13, 14 again, and got this information, I wouldn't be in prison,’” Jackman said.
And it was that mindset of helping the youth focus on more productive and healthy activities that brought Lockhart Bey and Jackman together and made them inseparable.
Within the prison, both would work and revamp the programs offered while also planning what they wanted to do once out of prison. Their plans have now come to fruition with the opening of the H.O.P.E. and P.E.A.C.E. Center for Youth, where they’ve established a space for Columbia children to be safe and be themselves.
