Noise bounces off the glossy blue concrete floor at BlackOut North, a modern convenience store designed and conceived by Nashville anti-violence nonprofit Gideon’s Army.
“First, we got a studio, and we make good food,” says 15-year-old Zachariah, a rising Hillsboro High School sophomore. “ I got started here because of my brother. At first I was too young to join, but then this year I was able to join up.”
Zachariah sits across the table from his brother JB during a brief break from the immense workload ahead of BlackOut North’s grand opening on Saturday. Teenage staff had hoped to bring in the public for a Juneteenth celebration, but had to postpone planned festivities — opening has come with its share of obstacles and slowdowns. This year’s $6,000 tax bill brought a hefty dose of small-business reality. Another co-worker had to shift his focus away from BlackOut North to prepare for a new baby. Steady victories, like the store’s active business license and excellent health score, have helped sustain momentum.
“We wash the dishes and mop the floor, clean up around the building, work the register, and make sure the kitchen is straight, every day,” adds JB. “We want people to be around this area again, like how it used to be. It’s about bringing Jefferson Street back, in a way. But not just Jefferson Street — this whole area.”
Like most other teenagers, Zachariah and JB think Nashville can be boring. Zachariah says the young people he knows gravitate toward public housing as social spaces, especially large complexes off of Jo Johnston Avenue and “Dodge City” in North Nashville — a nickname for the Cumberland View Apartments off Clarksville Pike.
“It’s really in the projects where all the kids hang out,” Zachariah says. “If you have nothing else to do, that’s where you go to see who’s out. And downtown. I think they’ll come here instead for the studio.”
As the city emphasizes violence prevention, longtime groups like Gideon’s Army and Nashville Peacemakers carry forward
Along with a tight core of friends-turned-co-workers, the two have helped transform the former convenience store at the corner of Osage and 23rd Avenue North into a multipurpose space aimed at their peers. Beyond the basic snack-and-beverage offerings expected of a corner market, BlackOut North offers a hot food menu and, yes, a small recording studio already painted with the portraits of forerunning Black cultural figures in North Nashville. Gideon’s Army, the nonprofit that serves as BlackOut North’s financial umbrella, hopes the community store can turn into a modern social hub in an aging neighborhood that was severely damaged by March 2020’s historically devastating tornado.
“ They are really learning how to become leaders, not just what you have to do to open a kitchen,” says Rasheedat Fetuga, a teacher who formed Gideon’s Army in 2010 to serve area youth. “It’s about personal reflection and personal growth in the moment. You’re not just learning a lesson about leadership — you have to put it into action.”
BlackOut North
As she’s speaking with the Scene, Fetuga opens up a thick ringed binder. At the top of each page is a shield logo for Gid University, a leadership curriculum she developed that takes small groups through weeks of discussion-based training. At Pearl-Cohn High School, she ran programs focused on community healing and nonviolence and organized Gideon’s Army in the same mold. She says she’s tried to be hands-off as BlackOut North prepares to open. That decision has likely slowed down the process, Fetuga says, but it keeps intact the youth-led, learn-by-doing mission at the core of Gideon’s Army.
BlackOut North is the group’s latest project. Past and ongoing initiatives include a violence interruption program and a universal basic income experiment that Gideon’s Army officially completed this spring, Fetuga says, after years of twists and turns. Private donations and city money fund the group, which the Metro Council awarded with a $375,000 grant from the city’s Community Safety Fund in April.
BlackOut North’s grand opening — an open house event slated for noon to 6 p.m. this Saturday, July 11 — aims to bring some life back to the corner of Osage and 23rd. Artists Kasumi Bledsoe, Elisheba Israel Mrozik, Michael “Ol Skool” Mucker and Kammarah Stevens collaborated on an exterior that blends imaginative Afrocentric portraiture and street art styles.
Block letters reify the unofficial Gideon’s Army slogan: “We All We Got.”
