Harlemite Aaliyah Guillory Nickens has gone from being arrested on and off for fighting as a teenager to being a fighter on behalf of young people who deal with the same struggles she did.
“Nobody wakes up as a bad kid … there are things that lead to that,” said Nickens, 23, who found herself in handcuffs four or five times between age 15 and 16. She said for her, there was no one addressing how young people get to that point of falling into crime and bad habits, and because she dealt with it firsthand, she decided to address it herself.
“I’m going to be that person for these other young people,” Nickens said she told herself at the time she chose to redirect her life.
Today, Nickens runs several organizations, working to improve her community and Black communities across the country, all while being a student — currently a criminal justice major at BMCC and an intern at Columbia University School of Professional Studies. She’s considering Howard Law School as her next step.
She founded More Than a Statistic (MTS) in 2020 after the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery, working with young people who are often viewed as a statistic and building them into justice leaders. “Whether it’s them being an activist, entrepreneur, artist, political … we train them into being that by teaching them how to get involved in a community and how to be a leader in a positive way,” Nickens said.
Nickens and her father, Larry Nickens, who dealt with similar struggles when he was a teen in Harlem, co-lead the Heir B&B Best & Brightest Academy, a youth development organization, and his street apparel company, Goody Graphics. They released the popular “Make Harlem Great Again” line of hats and hoodies last summer.
Redemption story
As a teenager, Nickens found herself involved in trouble often, getting into fights at school and lashing out, despite being a good student. She understands the root of it was that she was angry about her circumstances, which she says are not unique to many young Black kids in Harlem and beyond. She struggled with poverty, being surrounded by crime, and other issues; having to move from place to place; and watching her father have to work instead of being able to spend time with her.
“When it came to that quality time that other families may receive because they’re able to just live freely, I wasn’t receiving that because my dad had to work a lot,” Nickens said. Her father did make sure to attend all of her recitals and performances, she clarified.
“When you look at my dad, you wouldn’t even assume that I was getting arrested, because my dad is such a great dad, but nobody really looks into the root causes of the issue … People weren’t really understanding me or trying to understand me,” Nickens said. “I was so angry because I felt like I was stuck … I felt like I was born into it, so this is how my life is going to go. I don’t have any other choice but to get arrested … have kids early, be on welfare.”
It was after her last arrest, when she saw how abysmal the conditions would be behind bars due to how young people were treated, and also seeing her father break down in tears during his testimony on her behalf, that she was inspired to change things.
Being introduced to programs like Soul Sisters Leadership Collective made Nickens understand the school-to-prison pipeline and that her conditions as a young Black girl were systemic and designed in a way for her to fall into those destructive patterns.
“Everything started clicking,” Nickens said. “You make the choices of how you want to move and how you want to live in life. Yeah, you’re dealt these ‘Carter hands,’ but you don’t have to stay in those circumstances.”
Nickens went on to join civic and justice organizations like the New York Justice League and National Action Network. She later accepted a paid opportunity as a campaign organizer with Youth Represent from 2022 until this past January. She said she was selected over older candidates who may have had better academic resumés, because none of them had her type of lived experience. As her first order of business, she created a youth committee of 13–20 young people. It was here that she was able to deliver resources to young people such as food, MetroCards, and stipends. She also learned the ins and outs of organizing, and carries that knowledge today.
In More Than a Statistic, Nickens works with and brings young people aboard with similar stories to hers, with the intent of transforming their lives, whether from gang involvement, jail, homelessness, etc.
Since February, she and the cohort have travelled to several cities, including Chicago and Boston, speaking to students in public and alternative schools, which have the most youth facing barriers, and engaging them in becoming civically involved and bettering their lives. They also collaborated with other social justice organizations in those cities.
In addition to her justice work with her own group, working with her father, and being a full-time student, Nickens also runs a haircare business.
With her father’s “Make Harlem Great Again” brand, Nickens says she taught him the importance of telling a story to connect with audiences in marketing, which bolstered its growth in popularity in the last eight months.
It is important for Nickens to praise her father and highlight the image of Black single fathers because the media doesn’t do that.
“When I’m sharing about my story and how far I got, it wouldn’t have been this way if it wasn’t for my father,” Nickens said. “A lot of people fail, and they crash out because they just don’t have a great support system. My support system wasn’t 10 people, it was one person, and that one person was my dad … That’s how much support he gave me.
“He was a single parent, but he was a single father raising a daughter … It’s not like he knew the ropes on how to raise a young girl,” Nickens said. “There were a lot of things he could have done wrong that he did right … it’s important for me to name that.”
Nickens is grateful and proud to be alongside her greatest support — her father —in the work they are doing together and individually.
“It feels like we’re building a legacy to me,” Nickens said. “It gives me a wholesome feeling, like we’re doing this work together, and we’re building a name for both of us … It just feels genuine and authentic.”