October 6, 2021
Minority & Small Business Week
Beating the Odds for Business Start
Continued from Front
both parents were addicts, she said,
now recovered, but a close relative
raised her. She still had troubles
and was running with the wrong
crowd as a teenager when she met
Billy, a boyfriend who helped her
turn her life around. Then tragedy
struck and she went off the deep
end.
“He was an amazing guy, he was
17 and really changed my life,” she
said. “I stopped running around,
got back in school, and we were
going to go to college in Arizona.”
Then the worst happened. Billy
was diagnosed with leukemia and
died.
Williams didn’t deal well with
the trauma, “completely went on a
rampage” which led to more trage-
dy, and her world fell in completely
by the time she was 23 years old.
“About 15 years ago I was in a
horrible car accident, I was drink-
ing and driving, and almost took a
life,” she said.
As a result, she was sentenced
to three years in prison but was re-
leased after two years. But during
that time, she went to college and
found solace in the prison chapel.
“My first week in there, I went
to church, but it was literally just
to get out of my cell,” she said. “I
didn’t know anything about spiri-
tuality, or anything like that, ever.”
But she kept going back, and
eventually ended up every night
sitting on her bunk with a cup of
coffee, reading her Bible.
“I did that for two years,” she
said. “And I fell in love with who I
was and fell in love with Jesus and
spirituality. I like all religions in a
way, like Buddhism, and I love to
meditate.”
But readjusting to society was
difficult after prison, and Williams
struggled to find a job.
“They would pull my record up
but they were not seeing a person, ‘Y’Nique Touch Salon is so much more than getting a blowout
they were not seeing me,” she said. or protective hair style, it’s about the vibe, esthetics and overall
“I explained that I’m a real person, experience’, says owner Y’Nique McAllister Wright.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I’m
very educated, and then it was just
like, no, no, decline, denied.”
But she said she got a lot of
nurturing help from an esteemed
couple from Portland’s African
American community, Pastor Her-
man Greene and his wife Nike,
who provided clothes and a place
to stay to get her started and helped
her persevere.
She eventually found work, but
after her son Jason was born 11
years ago, she doubled down and
worked two full-time jobs to sup-
port him and provide a home.
For the past couple of years,
Williams has primarily worked as
a human resources specialist, but it
was still hard to make ends meet,
even with two jobs, because prices
Page 7
kept going up, and she made too
much money for public assistance.
“Jason gets straight As and
he’s a good kid,” she said. “But I
reached a point where I said, ‘This
cannot be my life. I’d watched a lot
of protests and knew he was watch-
ing, and I knew I had to do some-
thing bigger.”
And thanks to a little push, she
decided to do just that.
“So I was getting my hair done
— and you know the hair ladies are
our therapists — and I said, ‘I’m
supposed to do something. I don’t
know what it is, but I’m uncom-
fortable in my spirit,’ ” she said.
When her hairdresser asked
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