When a Lemonade Stand Becomes a Mirror: What the United States Owes Its Young Black Entrepreneurs

In Kansas City, Kansas, two young Black boys reminded the country of its dark past shedding its skin, and what we can do to fight against systemic oppression.

When a Lemonade Stand Becomes a Mirror: What the United States Owes Its Young Black Entrepreneurs

In Kansas City, Kansas, two young Black boys reminded the country of its dark past shedding its skin, and what we can do to fight against systemic oppression.

Two young Black brothers in Kansas City, Kansas set up a lemonade stand this summer the way kids have done for generations. Parez and Jakkhi Reese used a folding table, some cups, a handwritten price list, and the simple “American dream” of turning a hot afternoon into a little spending money.

This reminds me of my brother and I pushing our dad’s lawn mower through the hood to cut grass for extra money. It reminds me of other kids selling snacks on the corner for their AAU basketball team. It reminds me of little girls selling Girl Scout cookies.

The Reese brothers were selling lemonade, Kool-Aid, and snacks. They were doing what children do when they are ambitious and hungry, when their village has taught them that hard work has value, and when they believe in the basic principle of effort exchanged for reward.

Someone saw that effort, determination, and courage, and decided to call 911.

We don’t know who made that call. We don’t know exactly what they said. But we know what the call communicated. Two Black boys were standing at a corner, selling cold drinks on a hot day. And yet, somewhere nearby, an adult looked at that scene and wrote them off as criminals.

It is worth sitting with that for a moment, because the instinct to call the cops on Black children operating in public space is the kind of macro-aggression that Black people have endured since colonizers discovered the world isn’t flat.

What the Call Really Says about Community Policing

This is an all-too-familiar scene – the “BBQ Becky” incident at a park in Oakland, the woman who called police on a young Black entrepreneur selling water bottles near AT&T Park, the Central Park birdwatching confrontation. In each case, a Black person was doing something entirely ordinary, and someone chose to interpret our presence as a threat. And far too often, they result in deaths in custody which already go underreported in the United States. And it doesn’t matter whether you live in a blue state, red state, urban city, or rural town – no person of color has been exempt from this kind of treatment.

When my son was two years old, I took him to a park in Silver Spring, Maryland (right outside of Washington, DC, our nation’s capital) after daycare as any parent would on a nice day. A mother saw us playing together and chose to call the cops on me. My adopted son is white-passing, so from her perspective, there is no way that a then-27-year-old Black man could be his father. Thankfully, I come from a village that taught me to stay ready, so when the police arrived, I was able to prove through legal documents that he is my son. The woman received no citation, but she apologized to the police officer. I received no apology at all.

This is what racism and facism looks like in the United States.

Imagine, for a moment, two white children at a lemonade stand in a suburban neighborhood. A hand-painted sign. Parents cheering from the porch. Neighbors stopping to admire the initiative. A local news photographer wandering over for a charming summer photo. That is the American script we have written for children and entrepreneurship.

Why are only some children entitled to that?

The difference in how these scenes are perceived is about whose hustle is celebrated and whose is criminalized before a single cup is served. It is about seeing children as enterprising versus suspicious. This is a documented, measurable phenomenon – the adultification of Black children, the tendency to perceive them as older, less innocent, and more threatening than their white peers. Research from the American Psychological Association has found that adults, including those in law enforcement, consistently view Black boys as older and less in need of protection than white boys of the same age. We live in a world where for young boys who look like me, a lemonade stand is the corner, and the child is a suspect.

That is the macro-aggression embedded in a single 911 call: You don’t belong here doing this. You are not who I picture when I picture a child.

The Economic Necessity of Black Resilience

What saddens me about this entire story is a detail that deserves more attention than it will likely receive. One of the brothers said he planned to use his earnings to buy diapers for his niece and nephew. He is a child, helping to provide for other children in his family.

Let that sink in for a second.

We talk about entrepreneurship as the engine of “the American dream” (read: capitalism). We celebrate the myth of the bootstrapped founder who started with nothing and built something through will, grit, and ingenuity. But what do we call it when that drive emerges not from ambition alone but from necessity? How do we respond to a child who looked at a need in his home and thought, I can help with this. This young boy did not set up a lemonade stand to save up for a gaming console or a new pair of shoes. He set up a lemonade stand because diapers cost money and families need them. In this economy.

Macro-aggressions attempt to erase the clear sacrifice, care, and understanding that led this child to take initiative. The necessity that drove Jakkhi to that lemonade stand is the same necessity that has driven countless young people in underserved communities to find ways to generate income. It is the origin story of many of this country’s most successful entrepreneurs.

Why Law Enforcement Training and Community Engagement Matter

When Officer Morgan Reed arrived on scene and assessed the situation for what it was, she did something any reasonable human being with common sense should do – she became a customer. She then became a brand ambassador and called her colleagues. And I’m assuming someone also called the news station, otherwise we wouldn’t know about the story today. Within about 30 minutes, dozens of police officers and firefighters had descended on the corner of 33rd and Webster to support these young boys. They made $280 in half an hour. Officer Reed came back the next day and spent another $40.

“I think as a lot of us, we were kids growing up in this city,” Reed said. “And this was the thing that we always looked forward to as kids — these friendly police interactions.”

What Officer Reed demonstrated is what community policing is supposed to look like. These principles are not complicated: show up with humanity, read a situation clearly, ask what the community actually needs, and respond accordingly.

Cities like Chicago and Baltimore have put significant resources into community policing models grounded in exactly this kind of judgment. Chicago’s CAPS (Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy) program, centers police-community collaboration and relationship-building as crime prevention tools. In Baltimore, following the unrest of Freddie Gray’s murder in 2015 and a period of sharp distrust between residents and the department, sustained investment in community engagement initiatives, including youth outreach, violence interruption programs, and foot patrols designed around relationship rather than enforcement, contributed to measurable reductions in violent crime over the following years, especially under the current mayor Brandon Scott. The data supports these approaches, and the theory is simple: people do not want to harm communities they feel invested in, and our communities do not cooperate with institutions they fear.

Officer Reed also, without making a speech about it, pushed back against the premise of that 911 call. But one good exception does not erase the intended outcome of that call, and it speaks to a much larger problem.

America’s Storied Relationship with Economic Injustice

I’m not going to lay out centuries of the intentional blocking of economic prosperity for Black people in the United States. From slavery and Jim Crow, to redlining, mass incarceration, and predatory loan practices, if you don’t understand it, you’re willfully obtuse.

There is a substantial body of research and lived experience demonstrating that when young people – particularly young Black men – are exposed to pathways of economic agency, the outcomes improve across nearly every metric we care about: employment, education, housing, incarceration, and overall community stability. When a teenager has a legitimate way to earn, to build, and to feel that their presence is welcomed, they are less likely to find themselves in the pathways we spend far more money policing and incarcerating.

What the 911 caller did was attempt to block one of those pathways. That message continues to erode trust in institutions. It causes us to distrust the government. It causes us to discount the power of our vote. And it is all intentional. History is full of the consequences of what happens when that connection is broken at scale, in communities, over generations. And history has not always been on our side.

This is why it is not enough to shrug and say, Well, the police did the right thing in the end. They did — and Officer Reed deserves some credit. But again, the right response cannot only come after the call. It has to also come in the culture, in the neighborhoods, in the instincts of the people who live beside these children and choose how to see them.

It is impossible to tell the story of Officer Reed’s decency without acknowledging the larger context in which it lives. I live in Washington, DC, where the presence of ICE and the National Guard has increased significantly since Trump 2.0 took office in January 2025. When our communities fear law enforcement, we disengage. Witnesses don’t come forward. Crimes go unreported. The social trust that makes a neighborhood function, that makes a corner safe, that makes a child’s lemonade stand possible, disappears.

Parez and Jakkhi Reese will finish their summer on the corner of 33rd and Webster. They will sell lemonade. They will earn money for whatever reasons they imagine. And Officer Reed will probably stop by again.

Next time, the caller should just buy a cup of lemonade and mind their damn business.

The Reese brothers’ stand is open for the rest of the summer. If you’re in Kansas City, Kansas, you know where to find them.